Writing by treason on Tuesday, 23 of October , 2007 at 5:31 pm
Earlier today, I watched San Diego reporter, KFMB’s Larry Himmel standing in front of what was left of his Southwestern-style house – the place his family called home for the past 25 years. Every time there’s a tragedy in this country – whether it’s a tornado or a hurricane, a flood or a drought, an earthquake or a fire – the end result is always the same. Rich or poor, whether a family loses a mobile home or a mansion, it is the same loss. It doesn’t matter if the victims owned a little or a lot, had insurance or not: a person’s possessions, modest or extravagant, have value. There are keepsakes that can never be replaced. A life is ruined and must be rebuilt. We should regard each disaster with the same degree of compassion because no one deserves to have his world destroyed.
Himmel’s world was in flames, yet there he was, still working, reporting on his own loss: “No pets left behind… family out… cars out.” Like thousands of others, he grabbed what he could and escaped. Some people, in these situations, are not as fortunate. I remember leaving work in Fremont one afternoon and walking outside in the dark, in the snow. Odd, since October in the Bay Area is mild. It should have been light and sunny; instead the sky was dark and flakes were falling onto the cars in the parking lot. But it wasn’t cold. And then I noticed that what I’d thought was snow was really ash. The Oakland Hills were burning, and private art collections that rivaled those in local museums were lost. Houses burned to the ground, pets trapped inside.
I remember watching the Katrina coverage and talking to a doctor in Albuquerque who had gone to New Orleans to pull pets and people onto a boat. Comparisons will be drawn, of course, between the response to the hurricane and flood in the Gulf and the response to the fires in Southern California. Between the atmosphere in Qualcomm Stadium and that in the Superdome. The response of local authorities and government is different, for sure, but the response of the citizens is particularly noteworthy.
After a long drought, it’s raining and flooding again in Nawlins. Hard lessons were learned there in August 2005. Lessons will be learned again as the winds subside and the flames dwindle in California. Hopefully these will be put to good use the next time tragedy strikes – regardless of the geography.
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Writing by treason on Monday, 22 of October , 2007 at 3:57 pm
“Gentlemen, good evening. You have all been arguing at long distance over the last week or two about who was the real Republican, who was the true conservative. I hope you will all be willing to discuss this directly with each other tonight.
Mayor Giuliani, Senator Thompson says that you’re soft on abortion, that you’re soft on gun control, and that you’ve never claimed to be a conservative.
Who is more conservative: you or Fred Thompson?”
– Chris Wallace, FNC
Whew. We’ve survived another Republican debate. A few people bristled when the candidates went after each other, but that really didn’t bother me much. I think it’s constructive to explain the contenders’ differences in positions, but I’d still prefer it if the candidates would put more effort into explaining their own and let us compare and contrast.
Like Jonah Goldberg has pointed out: “Catering to the conservative base, the GOP presidential candidates keep trying to put on the Reagan mantle the way Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters tried to cram their dogs into her glass slipper.”
I’m with Goldberg: I wish the candidates would just knock it off. For years I’ve listened to the other side criticize the GOP for trying to move the country backward instead of forward. Of trying to pull the country back to the 1950’s — or maybe even the 1850’s. Now, with all the talk about Reagan and our thorny relationship with that Russian, it feels like the Party’s trying to get back to the Eighties.
Sure, that’s certainly an improvement, considering the Democrats have been moving us back to the Sixties and Seventies – and, with a return in 2009 to a Clinton White House, the Nineties. Right now we have a pack of Democrats running the country who have rekindled the past: Woodstock, anti-war rallies, civil rights, voting rights, uprisings in France, Che, and Bobby K.
I think it’s time for Republicans to grasp the idea that it’s time for something original. Times have changed – we don’t need another Reagan. What we need is to be more “progressive” than the Progressives. To move forward, new and improved. See, now our side has a Bobby, too. Bobby J.
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Writing by treason on Sunday, 21 of October , 2007 at 10:45 pm
“Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.”
– Saul Steinberg
And it provides yet another example of how the nice guys can end up finishing last. I don’t know if anyone’s done a study, but it seems to me that if someone did we would discover that baseball fans are more politically astute than say, football fans.
It’s one reason this weekend was so difficult. I’d hoped the Cleveland Indians would have dispatched the Red Sox on Thursday, but when they did not, I held on to the hope that they would play well and be victorious on my birthday. Truth be told, I wanted the series wrapped up because I didn’t want to have to choose between Game 7 and the Republican debate on FNC.
I’m a Cubs fan, so I chose to watch the debate. Don’t misunderstand – it’s not because I’ve lost interest because my team isn’t playing. It’s because of what T said about talented ball teams that inevitably implode: “Thou shalt not Cub-it the World Series.”
The Indians Cubbed it. It was particularly hard to watch because this was a team that played well and played fair, and their fans deserved a moment of glory. The Red Sox, on the other hand, sauntered into this series and should have lost. But boorish behavior is suddenly something to be celebrated in our culture, and the Red Sox had that in spades. I can’t diminish their victory – they clearly outplayed the Indians in those last games.
T kept me abreast of the game – he and the dog watched in the other room – and then I joined them during the eighth. I didn’t have to watch the whole game because I knew what was coming. After all, my team was the ’69 Cubs.
But during the debate, when Fred Thompson described a world with Hillary Clinton as its leader, he warned of “a comfortable mediocrity.” What a fitting line. It accurately describes, I think, what happens to so many sports teams. When it looked hopeless for the Sox, left fielder Manny Ramirez shrugged off the team’s middling performance and said: “It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”
Some interpreted that as his way of easing the tension on the team so they could just go out there and play without pressure; others thought he was demonstrating that he is simply a dick. Yeah, sure, it’s no big deal. No one will die, it’s just a game, and you still have your big, fat contract. Nice.
Of course, the Sox won, so Ramirez is a hero, not a goat. Personally, I just don’t like the guy, but maybe T and I have the wrong attitude about baseball and life. Why do we support the good guys, the underdogs? The team with heart, the team that goes out and plays fair, plays with class?
I hesitate to say I’ll be supporting the Rockies in the World Series because I suspect my endorsement will doom them. All I can hope for is that Colorado plays well, plays fair, and wins because it’s what they’ve earned and what they and their fans deserve.
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Writing by treason on Saturday, 20 of October , 2007 at 3:44 pm
Runners:
1. Duncan Hunter
2. John McCain
3. Rudy Giuliani
4. Mitt Romney
5. Tom Tancredo
6. Mike Huckabee
7. Ron Paul
8. John Cox
9. Fred Thompson
10. Alan Keyes
Jumpers:
1. Bill Frist
2. Frank Keating
3. Jim Gilmore
4. Tommy Thompson
5. Chuck Hagel
6. Michael Bloomberg
7. Newt Gingrich
8. Sam Brownback
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Writing by treason on Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 3:32 pm
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Writing by treason on Thursday, 18 of October , 2007 at 3:24 pm
“I have a million ideas. The country can’t afford them all.”
– Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mark Penn, the pollster and senior strategist of Hillary’s presidential campaign, has conducted an internal poll which predicts that almost one quarter of Republican women would defect from the GOP if Hillary is the presidential nominee in 2008. Why? Because, says Penn, of the “emotional” appeal of electing the country’s first woman president.
Drat. And it’s too late to repeal the 19th Amendment. I don’t agree with Penn about the number of Republican defectors because the handful of conservative women I know absolutely detests Bill Clinton and has no respect for his wife. However, I do see the possibility of female undecided or independent voters going that way.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s those women and security issues. I myself have looked to government for security, but that’s been national security. I don’t produce my own tanks and nukes, darn it, so I must defer to Washington on this one. As for financial security, I just want a healthy economic climate and abolition of the income tax. Frankly, it’s up to me to find my own source of income and support myself.
Until the day I end up living under the viaduct. I’ve mentioned before the most independent woman I’d ever met was confident enough to run her own business and go toe-to-toe and pick a fight with anyone twice her size, but that she continued to pay herself a relatively modest salary just so she could sock away as much as possible into a retirement fund. Like so many others of her gender, she lived in abject fear of becoming a bag lady. It didn’t matter how feisty or well-educated she was – she just knew that it would happen one day and she’d be pushing a stolen shopping cart down Central Avenue.
There is something to this thing about women and their security. Why? Because the average female will put up with a lot as long as she thinks she has it. “Sure, he cheats, he beats me, and he molests the kids, but he’s a good provider.” Surely you’ve met at least one woman like this.
Let’s not mince words here. Once a woman has screwed everything in sight, she gets to a certain age and realizes that her eggs are drying up faster than the state of Georgia. She lowers her standards and finds a poor sap who’ll trudge off to work everyday and support her. To seal the deal she’ll pop a kid or two, then decide that she wants to stay home and “do crafts.”
When I walk the dog I see evidence of this in my own neighborhood. I call it “The Baby Brigade.” Women who were probably once independent and supported themselves, then decided that they’d be passed over for a younger version and be out of a job. Suddenly they’re in the ‘burbs, driving a mini-van, smelling like Poly-Vi-Sol, and covering the refrigerator with crayon drawings.
Every morning they meet up with the other neighborhood mothers to push deluxe strollers to the park, then sit and chat and ignore the kids for a couple hours. But what about the legions of mothers who don’t have a spouse who will share the financial burden? Hillary has already backed off the proposal that would provide a $5000 check to every newborn, but she promises that more ideas are in the works. Like, expand daycare and pay those daycare workers more money. Better yet, why not just send a check to all the Moms who stay home and do the “hardest” job?
Why, welfare’s good for everyone – even John Edwards is taking advantage of it to raise funds for his campaign. Again I’m screwed. As a woman who has never bred and is getting nearer to the age where it will be impossible to do so — thank you, Lord Jesus! – I’m going to be one of the poor saps trudging off to work everyday to support these bitches.
Hmmm. It’s starting to look like it’s Mother Hillary in 2008. So why, suddenly, am I not feeling all that secure?
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Writing by treason on Wednesday, 17 of October , 2007 at 1:51 pm
“… I’m sorry to say so, but sadly, I must -
That Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to us…
…We’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then, that we’ll be in a Slump.
And when we’re in a Slump, we’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping ourselves is not easily done.
We will come to a place
where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked…
Do we dare to stay out? Do we dare to go in?
How much can we lose? How much can we win?
And IF we go in, should we turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
We can get so confused, that we’ll start in to race…
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The waiting place…
…for people just waiting.
Everyone is just waiting…
Oohh… the places we’ll go!”
What is this sudden snap to attention over that Mexican National with TB who’s crossed the border and crossed back more often than a Chinese ping-pong ball over an Olympic net?
And why does the average American appear so shocked when it’s revealed that someone in their midst is diseased? I’m currently living in the Third World – have been since ’95 – and reading our local newspaper is sometimes like curling up with The Modern Home Physician. Bubonic plague, West Nile Virus, Hantavirus, impetigo, flesh-eating bacteria – it makes a person want to avoid mixing and mingling with the local population.
I forget now what disease was cited in the report I’d read that got me all fired up about entering the healthcare industry. Some survey revealed that if there were a pandemic, a staggeringly high percentage of healthcare professionals with families would refuse to go to work. How odd, I thought. Isn’t that their job?
I remember in class last year we discussed MRSA and the majority of students went pale. “This is very nasty stuff,” the instructor warned. “Once it’s introduced to a hospital system it’s almost impossible to get rid of. Highly contagious. You just won’t be able to avoid contracting it.”
Parasites and disease have always fascinated me and I’ve never really worried about contracting something exotic, and then perishing. Slipping in the bathtub and cracking my skull worries me more, because I’d prefer not to die as a result of my clumsiness or lack of coordination.
So I never fretted about spending most of my life — almost a quarter of a century — in the Golden State, gateway to the world of germs. But I admit, sometimes I dreaded those SWA flights between Albuquerque and the Bay Area, a tad reminiscent of the Sujiatun Concentration Camp, because there was so much reason to suspect I was trapped mid-air with so many pathogens.
Until this point I’d successfully avoided hospitals and children so the only real health threat to me had been coworkers. I do recall a few close calls, though. Back when T and I were first dating he had been involved in a motorcycle accident. I stood at his bedside, fascinated by the lump of hamburger that had once been his foot. But soon I found myself eavesdropping on the conversation between the doctor and nurses concerning the patient in the bed next to T. It was difficult to hear them over the coughing, but I managed to piece together a pretty good scenario. The individual had no address and no insurance, but lots and lots of TB.
I turned to T and said, “Know this: If you survive your injuries and get out of the hospital and it turns out I’ve contracted what your roommate over here has, I’m going to kill you.” (Ugh – the dreaded consumption. It’s just that I’ve always disliked coughing, and gagging on my own lungs is probably the primary reason I’ve never developed a smoking habit.)
Yes, schools, hospitals, and airplanes are all wonderful places to come in contact with disease, but so are bus depots. It’s been ages – so long that I can’t even remember why I wasn’t driving my car. Either it was acting up or the roads were weather-affected, but for some reason I had to hop on a Greyhound to get from college back to the Bay Area. My brother, the certified Felix Unger of the family, had been chosen to drive to San Francisco to pick me up. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he finally arrived there.
See, this is the same person who, the year he got a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, excused himself before the thing was even fully unwrapped, and ran to his car with it so he could go home and try it out. I knew then when he came to fetch me at the SF Depot that there wasn’t all that much of a difference between a big city bus station and a hospital emergency room. In fact, sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference.
I’m reminded of the day during my clinicals when I was assigned to the ER at a local hospital. An old man arrived with his suitcases and sat down near the front desk. How smart, I thought. He obviously knows how inefficient this place is and has packed a few bags to make his wait more pleasant.
The truth is, he had no place to go, so he gathered his belongings and came to the Emergency Department to wait for someone to come and pick him up. It reminded me of my experience with Greyhound so I wanted to help him. As it turned out, he didn’t speak much English and I don’t speak much Spanish, but I was able to establish that he wanted us to contact his daughter in California so she could come and get him.
This was so much better, actually, than my previous experience in that hospital’s larger ER, when I was there with T on a Friday night after the pit bull attack. We sat across from a young couple and tried to look anywhere but there, but we kept getting pulled in. The girl sat silently, and she slowly and methodically picked at large red sores, which covered her companion’s face. She flicked the scab segments off her fingers and they landed wherever they landed. There was no escape. But the entertainment value in this made it bearable. T and I were mesmerized and wondered what precisely caused those sores.
It’s been two years and neither of us has broken out with the oozing lesions. I’d say it’s safe to go back, wouldn’t you?
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Writing by treason on Tuesday, 16 of October , 2007 at 12:00 pm
“Don’t vote — it only encourages them.”
– Author unknown
The world of politics is incestuous, as we know, and now nepotism has become even more difficult to avoid. So… Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are separated by only – what is it – eight degrees? And what about that previous revelation that Obama is also related to the Bush family? I’m aware that politicians are keeping relatives on the payroll, but how can we be sure politicians aren’t stuffing cabinets with their relatives, appointing them here, there, and everywhere? Cronyism is one thing, but when you have cousins around every corner it’s downright creepy.
But this got me thinking. Back in the Eighties when I bought my dream puppy, Barbara Ayn, the breeder handed me what looked like an organizational chart, but it was actually a genealogy, or more precisely, a pedigree chart. See, when you buy a purebred dog from a reputable breeder you get its family tree – a list of all the sires and dams – so you can trace your canine’s roots. Fascinating stuff.
When I was first contemplating purchasing a Boxer puppy I stocked breed books and in every one there was a history of a particular kennel and photos of a particular Boxer who was especially impressive. Pick up any book about Boxers and you’ll find these photos of this famous dog who, according to this piece of paper, was related to my Babs. Yowza.
I have no way of knowing, of course, that this information was genuine, and because she was sold as a pet quality dog (she was a dark brindle and much larger than the males in the litter), and I had no intention of ever breeding or showing her, I really didn’t care either way. We were just going to curl up on the couch together, watch Lassie reruns, and eat pizza. But choosing a president – well, that’s different. I won’t be curling up with the Leader of the Free World so I expect him to perform well in the ring.
If this sounds like a return to monarchy, it probably is. But why is this a problem? Sure, we fought a war to get out from under that system, but we’ve fought dozens of others for various reasons and no one seems to care about those, either. We care more about Chuck and Di and their progeny than we care about getting off our asses and voting. Obviously the average American is still smitten with the idea of royalty, so why not just go for it?
We can try this out on the state level. Since everybody’s running for office here in Nuevo Mexico it would be interesting to narrow the field by carefully investigating each candidate’s pedigree and analyzing their DNA. Who are these people related to? Who are they really? We scrutinize candidates’ voting and tax records, charitable donations, wardrobe, and hair, but think: What if we start digging into everyone’s biological history?
In time, no one will run for office. And won’t that simplify matters?
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Writing by treason on Monday, 15 of October , 2007 at 2:05 pm
“Being an old maid is like death by drowning — a really delightful sensation after you have ceased struggling.”
– Edna Ferber
Be warned: America’s silver tsunami is coming. Sixty-one year-old Ms. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a retired seventh grade teacher who lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the nation’s first Baby Boomer, filed for Social Security benefits today. That’s one down, 80 million to go.
“I’m thrilled to think that after all these years that I’m getting paid back the money that I put in,” she chirped.
Well, the bad news, of course, is obvious. But the silver lining in this – if there is one – is that today is officially the day when one of the post-war babes admitted she was old.
Ah, finally. If it’s true, as Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, says (“Boomers have always been a generation of trendsetters!”), then may this trend continue. I say, let decay be au courant.
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Writing by treason on Sunday, 14 of October , 2007 at 11:04 pm
“No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.”
– Paul Gallico
Just a quick note to say that I’ve made my choices for the Series. My first instinct is to support a team that is geographically acceptable to me, but because I don’t hold a grudge against any particular city and old baseball rivalries have diminished over the years, this method does not serve me well.
When pressed, I assess the number of ex-Cubs on a team, assume that team will lose, and make my choices accordingly. And sometimes it’s easy: Sometimes it’s just a team I like. Or easier: A team I don’t like.
I’ve had no reason to find fault with a particular organization because I boycotted the sport this past season and, frankly, I don’t know who plays where these days. I’ve put on blinders and am going into this without prejudice.
I’ve watched enough of the teams during the playoffs, though, to form an opinion, and I’ve determined that I like two of them and I’m partial to the teams’ fans. They have conducted themselves well and I appreciate that. The other two teams have disappointed me. In fact, one team’s fans have irritated me to the point where I’d do almost anything to see that their team is defeated. A clue: Don’t boo, disrupt the game, and fling debris out on the field. Just don’t.
As for the other team I’ve been having issues with, stop the grandstanding and get thee to a barber. Say what you will about George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees, but I fully support a dress code in baseball and that means NO LONG HAIR.
Nothing looks dumber than a baseball cap over long shaggy hair. Lay off the bling, trim your fur, and go play as well and as respectably as you can. So this means, of course, that I must support the victories of the Colorado Rockies and the Cleveland Indians.
May the best, most decorous team win!
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