On Laughing...and Hot Dogs...and Life....

Sometimes it is good just to laugh....Well, actually, I think it is often good to give it up, stop all attempts at being serious, and just laugh....(Even though this can bring trouble as I do tend to laugh at things no one else finds funny and I'm sure there have been times that people have looked and wondered what in the heck is wrong with me...but those are stories for another day.)

This morning I am thinking about my aging, VERY aging, (if chronological measures are not used), parents and though I've been consciously awake for hours, I have not yet laughed. (Instead I have thought about imminent death and woke with the headache that I've had all night...but that too is a story for another time....) I open the Times online and seeing a startling photo of the tail piece from the downed French plane, all red, white, and blue on the open ocean, I do not feel like laughing.

A few articles in, I unexpectedly choose one from yesterday title "This Land -- Ambassador Hot Dog." This might seem a strange choice as I have disliked hot dogs my entire life. (When I was a teen and my parents left my also teenage sister in charge while they took a "tour of Europe," I was given the choice of eating a half a hot dog in exchange for a certain brownie...but that also is a story for another day....)

This morning I read the following and can't help but laugh out loud:

"Twenty years later, in 1959, a hot dog again figured in American foreign relations when Nikita Khrushchev, the unpredictable leader of the Soviet Union, toured the United States. At one point he stopped at a packing plant in Des Moines, where he ate his first hot dog — although at least one account says his first bite had to wait until security agents waved a Geiger counter over the dog. A mere cold war formality.

The hot dog, it seems, figures in American diplomacy only when absolutely needed. In 1999, for example, President Bill Clinton gathered at a table with Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to eat hot dogs. Kosher, of course."

Yes, it is so nice to enjoy an unexpected laugh while reading the morning paper....

Of Power and Abuses....

After dropping my son at his carpool this morning, I heard on NPR about Jacqui Smith, British Home Secretary, who had previously stated she would not quit over reports that she had purchased porn for her husband with public funds. I'm not an Anglophile and I think that one's taste in porn -- including, whether, what, and with whom -- is a private matter. However, hearing this brief news piece got my attention. It is not just the porn purchase...in fact, I find other expenditures of public money on private matters equally as shocking....Dog food and toothbrushes? Moat cleaning?

Jacqui Smith, like (perhaps) John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and so many others suffer from some kind of affliction that shocks me. Whatever they do in their private lives is not my business. What I do find shocking is the use of public money for such follies. Have all these people lost their minds? Where is their sense of good judgment? Do "these people" (and by that I suppose I mean people in the public eye) come to believe that they are above the usual rules and mores which apply to the rest of us? That good sense and decent decisions do not have to be a part of their lives?

It would be easy to say that I'm just naive, that throughout the ages, across the political spectrum, there are examples of people who "do this." Newspapers and history books are replete with references to flagrant use of public money on private desires. That fact does not dim my ire. Hmm, what comes to mind is the aphorism I heard growing up: If so-and-so played on the freeway, would that make it right? The answer, of course, is that acceptance of stupid behavior doesn't make it the right course to follow.

And that, I suppose, is what bothers me about these stories: these people are stupid and arrogant...and they are the ones we choose to put in positions of power....

A quick lament on the fact that life gets so complicated we don't find the time to write a few words, to stick our noses in a good book, to dig our fingers into the warm earth, to tread our toes in the shallow waves as the water washes in and out just above the soft sand....

If anyone is taking the time to do that...I admire you and will strive to emulate your behavior....I am, I'm afraid, failing miserably at that...and instead stop only briefly to look out my office window at the occasional green hummingbird...and it's been much too long since I've stretched out in my yard, with a book or the watering hose....

Sadly...on Guns Again....

Guns and more guns. Last Wednesday I came in from a good run and opened my email. Still hot and sweaty and filled with endorphins. There in bold, unopened, was an email from Wesleyan entitled "Security Alert" and it was my first notice of the shooting of Johanna Justin-Jinich, though it didn't name her at first. Subsequent email notices followed. First the campus was shut down while they hunted for the killer. Then the doors were re-opened. Shortly after, another email warned that the police had recommended closing the campus again -- which isn't actually accurate since the campus, by deliberate design, is very open. The email said the kids were to stay inside their locked dorms.

I went to sleep with a bad headache and in a nervous state. It wasn't only the beautiful Ms. Justin-Jinich that concerned me....

First thing the next morning, another email warned that the killer's journal targeted Jews. Apparently he wanted to 'make Wesleyan the next Jewish Columbine.' Apparently the day before he had just walked into the campus bookstore, Czech-made gun in hand, and shot his victim dead. Execution style.

This weekend I read an issue of "The Economist." There was a short review of a book written about the Virginia Tech killings. The author, a teacher who had met with the killer a couple years before and who had great concerns over his mental health, posited that in the end, there may be nothing we can do. This violence is not actually predictable.

Yesterday I read the first reports about the soldier in Iraq who shot and killed five of his comrades. The article noted that this type of thing has happened before.

I have to wonder: do we have to accept so much violence? Would it make a difference if we worked to slow the rising tide of aggression and violent mental health? What if guns were not so available and accepted?

I don't know the answers...but I have to wonder....

Elizabeth Edwards and Responsibility

I love "having a blog" -- I can write away about anything that strikes my fancy....Rant, adoration, admiration, awe....No one tells me to stop writing....

So...this morning I'm reading about Elizabeth Edwards...Mrs. John Edwards...and her new book, which is not surprisingly about "resilience." Apparently she taped an episode with Oprah Winfrey. Without even knowing Ms. Edwards, I have a modicum of respect for her based on the publicly acknowledged facts that she has had a spouse in politics and thus has to deal with the public eye even though she personally gets nothing from it, that she has had to battle with breast cancer, and that she has had to live through her husband's affair....Now, it is that last fact that makes me write.

She is quoted in today's NYT's as saying: “I tried to get him to explain...but he did not know himself why he had allowed it to happen.”

Do I really need to spell out why this quote raises my ire?? Okay...I will. I can understand that she wanted explanations. I can understand that he didn't know of any. But I cannot accept the part about "allowing it to happen." Hello? "Allowing something to happen" implies passivity. As far as I know, having a sexual and emotional affair involves complicity, activity, but not passivity....

Affairs happen. Unfortunately that is a fact. Falls under the category of "shit happens." Sometimes it just does. I have never had an affair myself (thank God) but I have known well people who have. And I think that all of them would like to fall back on that passivity, that notion of "Oh, how did I allow this to happen?" But where is the responsibility in that??

It is a shame to see someone in the public eye, that would be Mrs. John Edwards, perpetuating this notion that there is no responsibility by the involved loved one....This is a place, I think, where we need to get real with our emotions, where we need to get raw and down and dirty and shine the bright light...not give someone a place to hide....

Mrs. Edwards is also asked, by Oprah, if she loves her husband and she does not answer in the affirmative. Indeed, I'm sure her emotions are a bundle of conflicts and there are few easy answers. If Mr. and Mrs. John Edwards -- together and as individuals -- want to get past this, I think they need to face up to facts...and then move on....Good luck to them!

100 days plus....

Okay, I gotta go back to Obama again...to President Barack Obama. I've been thinking a lot over this last week and I decided that, actually, even if President Obama did nothing else -- which is a big and improbable if -- he's already done a lot....

Today's New York Times has this: "In just over 100 days, Mr. Obama’s presidency seems to have done much to alter the greater American public’s perception of race relations. And perhaps, in some cases, even the reality." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/us/politics/03race.html?th&emc=th

Earlier in the week I read an editorial by Roger Cohen, (yes...the NYT again...), which pondered: "It’s strange then that a U.S. president who speaks good English, far better than his predecessor, seems able to communicate with...[the] world. This may even be Barack Obama’s biggest achievement in his first 100 days."

I'm sure a Google search -- or hell, even live conversations with real people! -- would reveal many other gifts that we can attribute to the very young Obama Presidency...but language and race relations are near and dear to my heart so I'm going to stop there and go back to my breakfast....

...Everywhere I read and more importantly, feel, that what our new President has done is to give us hope....We're still in a mess of trouble...but our hope persists....

Resourcefulness....

This morning I still find myself fantaszing about Maui....Although today the weather brings a strange chilly wind instead of the sun's warming rays....And actually, instead of dreaming about Maui, I'm stuck on wondering where do "middle class" people go when they're out of work and out of a home?

I think for a moment of whether I would be tough enough to "live in" a shelter...or beneath a freeway underpass. Thankfully I recall that when economic times were better, I paid off my van and so actually own it. I think: I could live in my van. I'd only have to find places to park it and finding running water would be good too....Okay...I'm feeling more secure now....Oh...and I also have a small tent.

Phew! Nothing to worry about here....