My aunt Liz--a love story

My Uncle Doc first saw his future wife at a party, and asked someone to introduce him to her; "I'd like to meet that tall blonde. Do you think she'd go out with me? Will she think I'm too old?" He was 31, she was 19. Obviously, the age difference was no barrier. They were married for almost 40 years.

I adored Liz when I first met her, when I was 5 or 6. Though not actually pretty, she had an aura of glamor about her. She was blonde, blue-eyed, beautifully dressed, and smiled a lot. She was feminine, smelled of perfume, and wore makeup. Neither my mother nor my grandmothers wore makeup, so I thought she was sophisticated as all get out. Adding to her aura of worldliness was the suspicion that she colored her hair. (She did.)

As a child, I was crazy about her, and she treated me almost like another daughter. I loved the way she decorated her house, with shepherdess figurines on glass shelves and lamps shaped like statues of princesses, with pink lampshades. She had a rose-colored satin bedspread, and lots of little pillows. She was the first person I ever knew who had toilet paper to match her bathroom fixtures, which I thought quite elegant. In our house, everything was quite utilitarian, and the toilet paper was whatever was on sale at Kroger's. I aspired to be just like Aunt Liz when I grew up.

My grandmother was a woman who thought very little of her children's choice of mates, Liz included. One of my cousins was also very disapproving. From something Liz said, I knew she was aware of this, but if she minded she didn't let it show. Another problem was Doc's medical practice. He spent long hours at his office and at the hospital, and if his patients called, he went. On many an evening she went out to dinner with him and returned with other friends because he had been called to the hospital for an emergency. She made friends, and a life, for herself, because he had very little time to give her.

I eventually stopped being a sweet adoring little girl and became an insufferable adolescent who scorned the empty materialism of Liz and her friends, women who were content to be wives and mothers, who played cards and golf, who decorated their homes in what I learned to call Jewish Renaissance style and had no true intellectual interests. Of course I still loved Liz and Doc, but I was able to look down patronizingly at their empty, vapid lifestyle.

In due course, Uncle Doc got sick. He was forced to abandon the practice of medicine. The police found him out driving around aimlessly and brought him home in a police car. That ended his driving career. I still visited them often, and sometimes he would make sense and then he wouldn't, quite. Gradually he became weaker and weaker.

Aunt Liz was the same as she had always been, though, always welcoming me and anyone else who dropped by with a smile. She was fortunate in that she was able to hire people to be with him at times, so she could have some semblance of a normal life. She could hardly have kept him at home if she hadn't had help, as he was totally unable even to walk toward the end. She told me later that she had gone to the nursing home to see about getting him admitted, but just couldn't do it. He died not long after. He had been sick for six years.

She is quite old now, walks with a walker, and no longer colors her hair. She speaks softly and tires easily. But she is still her smiling, gracious self. When I look back on my relationship with her, I realized that I seldom heard her say a mean or unkind thing. I didn't notice this quality when I was young, she made it seem quite easy.

Uncle Doc gave me a sage piece of advice when I was a teenager: "You should never marry unless you can better yourself. I married up. I improved myself." I thought this was really cute of him at the time, but didn't take him seriously. But now I see that he was absolutely right.

All men are brothers, except if they are not muslim

The RoP strikes again.

[A] Muslim student set off a debate when she sent an email to the mailing list of a Muslim students' association (rabitat al-tullab al-muslimin) at Virginia Tech asking the students to pray that Allah have mercy on those killed and wounded in the shooting attack at the university.

According to Aafaq, the dean of student affairs at American International University, Abu Hamza Hijji, responded, writing that Allah the Most Merciful forbids praying for mercy for the non-Muslim dead, or even for the non-Muslim living, and that it is only permitted to pray that they be rightly guided. He added that what happened was a sad occurrence, but that does not give Muslims the right to transgress the laws of Allah the Most Merciful.

Nice. Remind me again why we need to live under Sharia law?

Hollywood celebs embrace the simple life

Life in a state of nature is not nasty, brutish and short, it's fun! It's awesome!

[Drew] Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."

Of course, she gets to go home to flush toilets. The natives, unfortunately, continue to crap in the woods, faut de mieux. They probably don't have toilet paper either, not even one square per "sitting." I guess they can wash their behinds in an unspoiled stream and send the germs downriver to cause a plague somewhere else.

I am very sensitive to toilet paper issues, and very proud of my country's leadership role in providing the best toilet paper ever! in the whole world! Why, in some countries in Europe, the toilet paper is absorbent on one side only!

My God, you call that civilization?

I knew the Soviet Union was doomed as a political system when I read about a bunch of Soviet tourists in Africa, stopping at a rest stop, who stole all the toilet paper. No nation can long endure that cannot provide adequately for their people's toilet paper needs. A society lives and dies by the quality of their toilet paper!

My uncle's theories of raising children

My uncle Doc was my favorite uncle because he liked to roughhouse. Kids love that. On Saturday nights when I stayed over my grandmother's house, he would bring over a jar of pickled herring and we would share it. But while he was fond of me, he totally disapproved of the way my parents were raising me. I was, said Uncle Doc, spoiled rotten.

His kids, he declared, would be so in awe of him that they would run and hide behind the piano when he came in the door. Need I add that he was a bachelor at the time?

Fast forward a few years, to the time when Uncle Doc and his wife's serene abode was invaded by three little but fast-moving barbarians. They fought with each other 24/7, chasing each other up and down the steps with murder in their eyes. They screamed, whined, and complained. They took each other's toys and did not share. Uncle Doc's solution to this problem was to yell at them. The more they continued their antics, the louder he yelled at them. Threats of death were made, but did nothing to reduce the tumult. At last my aunt would go to bed with a migraine headache and he would stomp off to his office, leaving them in possession of the wreck which the household had become.

At night the bedlam continued, as each of the girls considered it her sovereign right to sleep with the parents. After one or two of them had joined the parental bed, my aunt would get up and go to sleep in any bed which happened to be vacant. You never knew who was going to be in what bed in that household. I was only a few years older than the girls, but I found it impossible to sleep at their house with all the coming and going.

The girls turned out all right. They grew up, graduated from college, stayed out of jail, got married and in due course had children of their own. My oldest cousin raised her children like a Prussian drillmaster. They dusted, swept, put away their toys, and made their beds like little automatons. The only thing missing was the snappy salute. She confided in me that she could never have raised her children the way she was raised, it would have made her crazy.

Listening to kids

Or not.

Children are cute and precocious and they sometimes say adult-like things. But they do not know their asses from a hole in the ground. Everything they say and do should be viewed as something said by a cute little person who is practicing being a grown up- someone who someday will have an opinion that I will give a damn about.

I know, I know, there's that old, "out of the mouths of babes" thing. Out of the mouths of babes come the following: cute little phrases, attempt to sound like adults, heart breaking claims of their love and affection, whining, complaining, temper tantrums, screaming, and vomit. Beyond that, they have little to offer in the way of contributing to decisions that adults make.

I should add that when they make statements about Global Warming or World Peace or the Importance of Recycling, they are little puppets expressing the views of their parents.

Here's to more and better size inflation

Since I myself am inflating, size inflation works for me. It's the only way I can ever fit into a size 10. Ha! In your dreams!

When I was young, back in the 20th century, 6 was about the smallest size you could find, and only rarely. Even 8 was hard to find. 10, 12, 14, those were the sizes of normal young women. Even 16 was not unknown. I weighed 116, had a 25 inch waistline, and wore a 12. I weigh, er, considerably more now. Let's not get into specifics.

Now that American women are fatter than ever, size numbers are smaller than ever. What's wrong with this picture? How much lower than zero can you go?

That's our girl!

A former Miss America defends herself:

When Venus Ramey caught a man she thought was stealing from her farm in south-central Kentucky, she shot the tires out of his vehicle so he'd be stuck there until police came.

Ramey, who was crowned Miss America in 1944, was on her Lincoln County farm last week feeding a horse when she saw her dog run to a nearby building where she stores old equipment. For some time, thieves had been breaking into the building to steal the machines to sell for scrap, she said, so she decided to investigate.

When she confronted a man she found on the property, he said he would leave, she said.

"I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said.

She had to balance on her walker as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

Thanks to Frau Budgie.

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Good advice for John Edwards

He won't take it, though.

The comments are funnier by far than the video. Lighten up, everybody.

Summer comes to Columbus Ohio

When I lived in Ohio, I thought poets had made up all that stuff about Spring--poetic license, you know. We always went directly from Winter into red-hot Summer. Actually, Spring started this year on April 21, at 6:30 p.m., and by 7:20 it was all over. We were in the torrid zone.

Every flower possible springs out of the ground with a big shout and the sun bears down like in those movies about mad dogs and Englishmen.

When I lived on the east coast, I saw Spring in all its subtlety; first the hibiscus, then the forsythia, then a few tulips tentatively stuck their heads up. Vernal breezes blew, mornings were a little chilly, and you could wear a sweater in the evening. It made me understand what Will Shakespeare and the guys were going on about. Sweet. Subtle.

Columbus will always be familiar territory to me because it is in my bones. Beneath these freeways that zoom from one corner of the city to the other are the ghosts of the neighborhoods where I lived, played, and went to school. The ruined slum on the corner was once a corner grocery, and the rickety deserted movie house was once bustling with kids every Saturday, rain or shine. One of my aunts lived on this corner. Another was down this street, and my grandmother was about half a mile away. All gone now. My aunts were like boulders, landmarks which would always be there. Only one aunt remains, and she is frail and elderly.

How can I possibly live with absolutely no aunts? Cousins are a poor substitute.

My aunt Ellen loved the cemetery, particularly the spot where her mother was buried. It was a nice spot, shaded by a small tree. She once suggested setting up a card table and four chairs near the grave so the girls could play bridge while keeping their mother company. When that idea fell on hostile ears, she kept right on visiting, advising the cemetery staff on proper maintenance and upkeep, no doubt to their great advantage. Now she can spend quality time there, since she was buried there last December.

5 college girls from the 20th century

I am the second from the right.

Imus brings up sensitive hair issues

Not that I'm a ho--can a granny be a ho?--or because my hair is nappy. But I do have hair issues. Very serious hair issues. All my life my hair has been coarse, wavy, and there was too much of it. I had surplus hair. I had hair extensions before hair extensions were invented. To be more precise, I had 200,000 cowlicks. Each hair went its own way.

The ideal in the suburban high school I attended was straight, lanky hair. Parted on the left, usually, although some free spirits may have parted it on the right. Curled up at the ends, if you must. A small bow or barette was permitted. And that was that. I differed greatly from this ideal. It made me feel, as George Gobel used to say, that the world was a tuxedo and I was a pair of brown shoes.

My aunts felt for me and took me to hairdressers, who would clip, crimp and tease my hair into some semblance of the current style. After my next shower, the status quo ante was restored.

I wonder how much money has been spent on making curly hair straight, or straight hair curly? I do know that Madame C J Walker, the first 20th century African American woman to be a millionaire, made her fortune in hair products.

And so--to quote someone else who has been in the news lately--it goes.

Voting

Yesterday we had a special election to fill a vacant seat for state representative. We went to the school where the polling was taking place, and as we got out of the car a very nice man stopped us. He told us he was the father of the Democratic candidate, and asked for our support. Very politely.

I felt embarassed. I'm a Republican. I came to the polls precisely to vote for the Republican candidate. And I didn't want to lie to the man. I didn't want to be put in a position of having to lie to him in order to spare his feelings. Like I was doing something wrong. I'm a Republican, dammit. And I'm allowed to be a Republican. It's legal.

The reason we have the secret ballot in this country is so that no-one has to tell anyone else who they are voting for.

End of sermon.

I found it on E-Bay

Actually, I didn't. I didn't find it on Google either.

Start at the beginning. I lost my cell phone. Went to Best Buy. They looked up my phone number on their computer and discovered I was eligible for an upgrade for one cent. So I got a new LG phone which includes a camera. Good. I like to take pictures, but never have my camera with me, so I will take pictures of all and sundry with my cell phone and upload them to my computer.

Not so fast. I have to have something that hooks my camera to the computer. So I am looking for a cable to perform this humble task. I went to Best Buy. They don't do peripherals for Cingular, and recommended that I go to the Cingular Store. So I did.

Amy, who was sitting at her desk apparently in a trance, interrupted her communion with her Inner Amy to assure me that the Cingular store doesn't sell stuff like that, I should try the Cingular or the LG website, and resumed her reverie.

So I looked on E-Bay. E-Bay sells all kinds of LG goodies, but not that. I googled it. Google has bigger fish to fry, namely selling expensive phones and bluetooth attachments. And other stuff which should interest Martians, but not me. I can't even program the cell phone. I can't even download a ringtone. And I don't want to be walking around talking to someone invisible. I talk to myself already, I don't need to be in touch with someone else.

So I am in the twenty-first century, trying to use twenty-first century gadgets, but with a brain that is stuck in the 20th century.

High honor accorded American Senator

Los Angeles, CA. The coveted Dreidel Award, honoring the American Jew who has best embarassed his country, was given to SenatorTom Lantos. The award was conferred by Barbra Streisand, who praised Lantos for his unwavering courage in implementing a distinct foreign policy aimed at subverting that of the mass murderer and civil rights destroyer, George W Bush.

In his acceptance speech, Lantos informed an appreciative crowd that as a Holocaust Survivor, he has undeniable moral authority and that other Jews should shut up when he talks. His speech was met with thunderous applause.

Among the celebs present to honor Lantos were Stephen Spielburg, Larry David, and Senator Barbara Boxer. The Dixie Chicks provided the entertainment.

Also present was George Soros, who received a lifetime achievement award for his devotion to overthrowing the evil capitalist system and eliminating the State of Israel.

A poem by William Blake

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

It's still poetry month--and I was an English major.

McCain takes a stand

He defies majority rule:

The most revealing exchange came when Mr. Pelley, [Scott Pelley, of 60 minutes]in all apparent seriousness, asked the Senator "at what point do you stop doing what you think is right and you start doing what the majority of the American people want?"

Answered Mr. McCain: "I disagree with what the majority of the American people want. I still believe the majority of the American people, when asked, say if you can show them a path to success . . . then they'll support it." Later Mr. Pelley observed that Mr. McCain was betting his entire campaign on the success of the current "surge" strategy in Baghdad. The Senator replied that he'd "rather lose a campaign than lose a war."

The media seem to have lost sight of what representative democracy means. It means we don't hold a plebiscite on every issue and then obey what the majority want. Rather, we elect representatives who are supposed to use their own judgment. (Stop laughing now. Now, I said!)

The media, on the other hand, seem to believe that majority will, as expressed by polling, is the be-all and end-all of politics, and some of our representatives--Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi spring to mind--agree with them. Reid, in particular, seems to believe that he has been ordered to stop, or at least sabotage, the war in Iraq. He interprets the 2006 election result as a direct order from the public, the kind of order a general gives a private. George W Bush is popularly supposed to take his orders directly from God. Reid takes his orders directly from the American people.

But who knows what the outcome of an election means? It is just as easy as knowing the will of the almighty. Maybe people were fed up with the Republicans. Maybe they merely disliked the Republican who was then representing them. Maybe it was raining on election day. Or their car wouldn't start. Or something. After World War II, the British people voted Winston Churchill out of office. Were they mad about how he handled the war? Did they decide they would rather be governed by a thinner politician? Or what?

Reid and his fellow Democratic hacks and timeservers (and the Republican dimwits who aid and abet them) were elected to do their job--pass legislation--and leave the President to perform his Constitutional duties. Bush will not be president forever. But while he continues in office, he is Commander in Chief.

The reliance on majority rule, as expressed by polls, is touching, if a bit pathetic. Polls cannot be the basis of policy. If the American people believed 70 to 30 percent that the mountains are going to fall into the sea, would that make it true?

The over-riding issue of our nation, I would say the only issue, is the conduct of the War on Terror. If we lose that, it won't much matter what our leaders think about stem cell research. Gay marriage? I believe the term loses something in translation to Arabic.

That is why McCain or Giuliani are acceptable candidates to me. Both would prosecute the war effectively--that is to say, they would continue to fight until they had won. At one point I would have said Hillary Clinton was acceptable on the basis of her views on this topic, but she has been all over the map lately, to the point where she seems, at times, out of her mind.

Hat tip to Rachel.

Is April really the cruelest month?

Frankly, has T S Eliot ever tried November? Or Frbruary?


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

This April is the cruelest etc. wheeze posits people with souls so delicate and sensibilities so esquisite that they cannot withstand tender feelings. It is better (for them)to feel nothing than to suffer the pangs of love. One might be disappointed in love, you see.

As for me, I'll go with Shakespeare: Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

Kissing Sharpton's er, ring

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Imus said something tasteless and offensive... Why start apologizing now?
[H]is apology led directly to his appearance on Al Sharpton's radio show. The apology gave Sharpton and the other racial hucksters their wedge.

I've been meaning to put in my two cents about Sharpton for a long time now, so here goes. Sharpton is a bright,funny, witty man, obviously intelligent, who has cynically chosen to use his abilities for his own self-aggrandizement.

He is capable of so much better than this: he was the only non-dead speaker at the Democratic Convention. Compared to the rest of the clapped-out political hacks, he was lively and engaging. But the man has no morals whatsoever; as the saying goes, he would sell his own grandmother and deliver someone else's.

Does he have even a speck of conscience? Does he ever wake at three in the morning feeling sick and ashamed of the evil he has done? Has he ever done anything out of a worthy motive? He's a rev--I assume this is a religious title. Does he ever exhort his listeners to love one another?

I fear that the answer to all these questions is no. Al is for Al.

Radnor PA police decide not to charge out of towners for service

I am not making this up.

RADNOR, Pa. - Officials will stop enforcing an ordinance that raised motorists' ire by attempting to bill out-of-town residents for township police services at accidents.

After adopting the measure in April, Radnor Township was inundated with complaints that a collection agency overstepped its authority by trying to collect payments from motorists themselves when insurance companies would not pay.

"Obviously, this ordinance was not functioning the way this board intended," board of commissioners President Hank Mahoney said at a meeting Monday night. However, he defended the law as "legally sound."

Nancy Pelosi's headscarf

In all the fuss about Pelosi's headscarf, no-one has sought the answer to the most important question:

Where did Pelosi get that headscarf? I'm sorry, but this is a woman who wears pearls around her neck worth more than my entire yearly income, and she wears a schmatta like that? For shame. It's a shanda for the goyim.

I believe she borrowed it from her cleaning lady.