CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY NINE: PAIN AND GROWING UP REPUBLICAN

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY NINE: PAIN AND GROWING UP REPUBLICAN

Still 2015. Still Florida. Still hot. Still me. Houston is beating up on Florida State, as I put my fingers to the keyboard this humid afternoon on  December 31. Four crackerjack books came from Sondra today – way to start the New Year. Now I have Brooklyn, Spotlight, a Maeve Binchy novel (Echo?) and a series of stories from Theroux. Oh, she sent a box of See’s Candy too. Everyone knows about my sweet tooth – I have truffles from Barbara and Louisa, See’s from Sondra, and I myself have filled the larder with more M and M’s and mini KitKats. Sonja also brought a container of white chocolate covered nuts and pralines. Enough! Dentist appointment on Monday – not kidding. 2105 will be remembered as the year of the dentist for me, Dr. Bennett, the “gentle dentist” of Key Largo, and the innovative endodontists Ken Grossman (Key Largo), Dr. K (Kansas City) and Jeannette Kern (Monterey). That’s what I get for two years of tooth neglect. Damn you, Dr. Stein, for suddenly retiring in 2013. I pick doctors younger than I, for the most part, so I won’t lose them to retirement. I had not anticipated his desire to retire early. Guess I’ll have to go with the 30 and 40 year olds and hope they don’t decide to change professions, as Dr. Cunningham did (dentist to watercolorist).

Still Alice. Did you see this film starring Julianne Moore as a brilliant woman who learns she has early onset Alzheimer’s or dementia? She was a highly successful professor at a top academic institution, and the smartest person her husband knew. And as the dementia progressed, she remained “still Alice”, while unable to deliver her scintillating lectures or sometimes not remembering how to get home after a run. I remember Abbie Lou Williams, my 78 year old artist neighbor in Carmel Highlands in the 1970’s, who would be telling me a great story, then halting, as she was losing her train of thought and forgetting the rest of the story. At this point, she would always say: “It’s hell getting old.” I heard the utter frustration in her voice and empathized to the extent that I, in my 30’s at the time, could imagine forgetting a great story in the middle of it. Now I can imagine it, and I hope that I can have the mental acuity of my mother at 99 years of age, remembering everyone and everything – well almost everyone and everything. Some things should be forgotten, or at the very least neglected, kicked to the curb, boxed up and closeted – you get the point. They say we humans don’t remember pain. That was true for my March hospital stay this year, primarily because I was supersaturated with opiates. However, I clearly remember the three weeks of withdrawal in April – worst three weeks of my life. Who was that cadaver staring at me from the mirror? Would I ever want to eat anything ever again in my life? Good times.

Today my new physical therapist, Lisa, stated “You never complain, do you?” That comment would surprise the Admiral, who believes I complain too often – not about pain, but silly things (to him). When I have pain, I sometimes let out an “Owee!”, which I have no control over. It’s pain to brain to mouth: “Owww!” Then I move on, usually doing something to ease the pain. Right now I was feeling  pain in the remaining part of my tibia of my right leg, so I removed the prosthesis to continue writing. According to the PT, if you feel pain in your prosthesis, it’s time to take it off to avoid blistering or rupturing the skin. Because if you do that, you can’t wear your prosthesis. And trust me, it’s not easy to spend your life hopping around on one leg. It’s hard to get up stairs that way, hard to get on and off the boat, and generally hard to get anywhere without falling or at least worrying about falling. So for all you new amputees starting out, remember, if there’s pain, take off the prosthesis. I was reading one of the amputee websites to find out what a good fitting prosthesis is supposed to look like, and I didn’t find very much useful information on that subject, just that you have to keep working with your prosthetist to “get it right”. “Getting it right” is elusive, especially when the bone at the end of your shortened leg is prominent and tends to start hurting after a relatively short amount of walking. Gee, it sounds like I’m complaining. Well, I’m not, I’m explaining. I’m trying to share my experience, so that amputees and prosthetists who read this (and their families and friends) know the importance of a good fit and keep working on their limbs until they have one. I did learn from the website that a prosthesis usually lasts three years. This is somewhat alarming, since Terri told me that certain scrooges in Congress have written and introduced a bill that would limit a Medicare recipient to one prosthesis per life. I guess their mothers and fathers do not have artificial limbs. Or they are just plain idiots – penny wise and pound foolish. I’ll go with the second choice.

Speaking of just plain idiots, I feel a political rant coming on. I grew up in a Republican household, and I remember when the honest Republicans threw out the corrupt Democrats in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Gordon Payrow, the Republican candidate for mayor, always wore a white suit, in case you had any doubt who the good guy in the race was. And he won – the voters threw out the corrupt bums so that our mayor in shiny white suits could clean up the mess at City Hall. I guess he did. It was an unusual victory, given the number of Democrats in blue collar Bethlehem, the company town of Bethlehem Steel. This experience was formative for my early political leanings, in that I thought that Republicans were progressive do-gooders with pure hearts and Democrats were out to steal the public’s money and feather their own nests. What happened to those Republicans? Is John McCain one of the few remaining good guys? Or did he feather his own nest with so many houses that he can’t even remember how many he now owns? I know, I know, he married a very wealthy woman, but that’s certainly a form of nest-feathering. And where does he stand on women’s rights?

 It’s not easy to remain in the Republican Party and support an Equal Rights Amendment or women’s rights to reproductive freedom. I bet H. Gordon Payrow, Jr. would have supported women’s rights, although I don’t ever remember him talking about that in the 60’s and 70’s. And you know what? Now that I read back on the mayor before Payrow, one Earl E. Schaffer, a Democrat, I read about his  positive vision for Bethlehem, with more parks and a government complex – and not about any corruption during his 12 years. Hmmm. Was I being sold a bill of goods by Republicans back then? Oh dear, how impressionable we are in our teens. And how strong is our parents’ influence on our politics. I remember that whenever Wellesley polled students in presidential election years, it was significant that the freshmen usually voted the family party line (mostly Republican),  but the majority of seniors voted much more independently from their families’ political affiliations. Sure, not all Republican Wellesley women became Democrats during their four years in college, but a large number did – and  Independents, of course – that middle ground between leaving the family and striking out on one’s own. My parting from Republicans came in the summer of 1966, after I had worked for Ed Brooke for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. I was with the Wellesley-Vassar Washington D.C. Internship Program and I had the misfortune of choosing to work for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. A more paranoid group of politicos I had never met. I wore a pin “Mob Rule” to work, and the people I worked with thought I was a spy for the Democrats. I wish I had been. I could have told the Democrats they had nothing to fear, at least based on the ineptitude and drinking penchants of the folks I worked with. Still, they had their secret weapon, Richard Nixon, who was making a comeback even then, after the Goldwater debacle. Richard Nixon, there’s a moderate Republican – but steeped in paranoia. After that summer in the Republican frat house called the RCCC, I decided to opt for a party that did not appear to have such paranoid delusions. And for the most part, I have been happy ever since as a Democrat, although my economics are socialist. Before there was Bernie Sanders, I was decrying income inequity, particularly in our sex-segregated labor market. You can call me a one-issue voter, if  you really think that supporting equal rights for more than half the population, and more than half the registered voters, is a narrow single issue. End of political rant.

The fan just died. I have to go out on to the deck to get some fresh air. Please have a safe and sane New Year’s Eve. Root for the underdogs and everything will be okay.

 

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT: HOLIDAY RAMBLINGS

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT: HOLIDAY RAMBLINGS

It’s the day after Christmas – Boxing Day in the UK – and we’re having the hottest holiday season I have ever experienced. Mid-eighties with very high humidity during the day and high to mid-seventies at night. No relief. I’m sweating as I sit at the computer in the boat’s salon. Add to this unseemly weather my frequent hot flashes and – BAM – it’s clothes changing time four or five times a day. Or clothing optional. I see the merit of nudist colonies. Yesterday I was vacuuming the salon area rug and huge drops of sweat were falling from my face and arms on to the vacuum and the rug and the floor. I needed to wipe up the floor after vacuuming. There is one place that gives me a break from this intolerable humidity – the fitness room in the Courtyard Marriott. It’s air conditioned within an ounce of its life. I can work out – hard – for 40 minutes and get my heart rate up and breathe heavily – but no sweat! I love that place. But enough about the weather and my sweat glands.

We returned from our most recent road trip – to Pocono Pines, Pennsylvania and to Solomons, Maryland – on December 22. We had a great weekend visit with my brother, Rusty, and his wife, Lois, and their puppy, Hopi. Naturally a cold front had come into their area the day we arrived, and we were dealing with days in the 20’s and nights in the teens. It was glorious. I walked to Lake Naomi with Hopi and my brother and could see my breath. There were snow flurries, or else the snow the ski resort was making had wafted down the mountain side to us. There was no natural snow, and the lake was still watery. Rusty said it’s usually covered with ice by this time of year. After we left, the temps went back to their abnormal highs in the 60’s and 70’s. But so far we have had three days of winter. By the time we reached Solomons, Maryland on the 20^th and had dinner with Janie and Mike at the Texas Longhorn Roadhouse, it was warming up again.

At my brother’s home we did some indoor activities, in addition to eating pizza and fried chicken, which included watching the Democratic debate Saturday night and screening the movie “The Book Thief”. This movie was based on a prize-winning novel, which I read along with my Book Club a few years ago. The young girl was portrayed by Sophie Nelisse, who is an amazing actor at the age of thirteen. (Thirteen!) Her adoptive parents, played by Emily Watson and Geoffrey Rush, were both at their best – which is saying a lot for these two accomplished actors. This movie came out in 2013, so if you have not seen it, you can get it on any movie streaming app, or better yet, buy it for a song. The story revolves around Hitler’s Germany during the early war years, but somehow it is not nearly as depressing as “All the Light We Cannot See”. I loved the sign painter’s idea of teaching his daughter the alphabet and building her vocabulary by drawing each letter, capital and small, on the cellar wall, one right after the other at the top of the wall. That way, she could write down all the new words she had learned during the course of their reading the books she stole. The first book she stole was “The Grave Digger’s Manual”, which the grave digger who had dug her young brother’s grave had dropped from a pocket. Now that’s a diehard reader, to start out reading about how to make a grave! Then she stole a book from a huge bonfire of books which Hitler had ordered all the towns and villages to do, in order to get rid of any anti-Reichian influences. Then she hit the jackpot with the huge library of forbidden books in the house of the town’s mayor. That’s enough – you have to read the book or watch the movie to learn any more.

About the debate – I always learn something about foreign or domestic policy from Hillary Clinton, when she answers a question. She is loaded with information and she puts the information to good use by suggesting sane policies and programs. No carpet bombing travesty for her (or from Sanders or O’Malley, for that matter). No ban on Muslim travelers to the US. No wall to keep Mexicans out. (Hey Donald, they build great tunnels, have you heard?). No absolute ban on abortion – no ban at all. No homophobia. No restrictive voting laws. No obscene increase in military spending. But yes to climate change controls, yes to women’s equality, yes to raising wages, yes to taxing the top 1% appropriately (as we used to do under Eisenhower and Reagan). Let’s make some history this year at the polls – if I can’t be elected the first woman president of the USA (and apparently I cannot, at least not in 2016), then I strongly urge you to vote for my surrogate, Secretary Clinton. It’s John Adams and John Quincy Adams all over again, sort of, but with a former First Lady (it should have been Abigail Adams) moving into the Oval Office. Did you know that John Quincy Adams is considered the smartest president we have ever had (based on IQ)? His father is in the top 10. No word yet on where Secretary Clinton would rank, but President Clinton is also in the top ten along with Lincoln and Jefferson and Madison, among others. Yes, you guessed it, Reagan and George W. did not make the top thirty. They were both in the bottom fifteen. Still, their IQs were well above the national average of 100. What they lacked in book smarts, they made up for in their grandiose catch phrases like the “Shining City on the Hill” and “Mission Accomplished”.

While I still want the next president to be committed to equal rights for women, I would also very much like her to protect Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits, and if it’s not too much trouble, to increase Social Security benefits on a yearly basis. The cost of living goes up each year; so should the benefits. I am grateful for the work of AARP in advancing these positions for me. All politics is local, except when you’re dealing with the bureaucracy of the federal government. Then it’s good to have a strong lobbyist (the hated word) in D.C. advancing your agenda. I may be able to organize my neighbors to lobby for “no parking” signs in Harper Canyon. But I don’t have the juice to mount a movement to protect Social Security and Medicare. I felt pretty all powerful in the sixties and seventies as a law student and then as executive director of the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF). I wrote a law providing for equal credit opportunity. I worked for passage of Connecticut’s Equal Rights Amendment to its Constitution. I rewrote Connecticut’s sexual assault laws, eliminating the element of “earnest resistance” on the part of the rape victim as part of the definition of rape. Yes, that was a really good change.  I wrote briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court on the woman’s right to reproductive freedom. All of our victories in that arena came crashing to a halt in the mid-seventies when Justice Rehnquist gave us Roe v. Maher, denying poor women the right to reproductive freedom.

Anyway, I was writing about our road trip, not a trip down memory lane.  We stayed at so many Hilton hotels along the way that when we returned the Admiral learned that he had achieved “Diamond” status. We had been “Gold” before the trip. This means automatic upgrades, where available, and complimentary breakfasts, and more points. The Admiral is ecstatic. Now if Hilton could just design a sensible room for a disabled person, we’d be in business. Their designers come up with the dumbest things – like a bathroom that you can’t enter with a wheelchair or walker, because the hallway is too narrow and the door to the bathroom is hung on the wrong side, blocking access to the bedroom. Or how about putting elevated slabs of wood or marble across the entrance to the bathroom, so a wheelchair cannot enter or leave easily? Or how about putting grab bars in the shower stall, but not installing a seat for the amputee to sit and take a shower? Or installing a regular bathtub with high sides, with no seat or stool in the tub to allow the amputee to sit to shower or bathe? I would gladly offer my services as a consultant to Hilton so that they can avoid these embarrassing mistakes in their hotels across the country. At this point, however, they lead me to believe that they just don’t know what they’re doing, and perhaps that is because they also just don’t care enough to design and build functional rooms for disabled guests. Compare and contrast: the Hilton Garden Inn has automatic doors at its entrance, while the Hampton Inn has heavy manual doors. Same owner, what’s the deal? Are disabled guests who go to the Hampton Inn supposed to be stronger than Hilton Garden Inn guests? Just asking.

On Christmas Day Sonja arrived. The Admiral picked her up at the Ft. Lauderdale airport, and when they arrived in Key Largo, she took us to dinner at Skipper’s, the restaurant on the canal. Generally our only experience with Skipper’s is the music that travels across the water to Slow Motion, much of which is execrable. But last night the music was festive island “steel band” music – no wailing vocalist – and quite tolerable. The food was better than that. The Admiral had squid cooked in an exquisite combination of seasonings, Sonja had blackened fish in tacos (after they returned the fried fish to the kitchen and got her what she ordered), and I had a well-cooked hamburger and fries. Okay, my food selections are not imaginative, and I rarely eat fish in this ocean/bay paradise. But sometimes a hamburger hits the spot, and last night it did. Besides, the food took a back seat to the reunion of the Admiral with his oldest daughter, a brilliant tax attorney from Chicago. She came in her winter clothing, so the Admiral took her shopping for some summer stuff today. And now he’s baking a sweet potato, which he will top with curried vegetables. The Admiral knows how to please Sonja’s taste buds. They’re sharing the fish dip which they both love. It’s great to observe them together again. Sure, the Admiral can be a curmudgeon with Sonja too, but she knows it’s an act to try to hide the fact that he is a pushover who would do anything for her – within reason – to make her happy.

I’d like to give a shout out to all of you who sent us greeting cards and to Marlea, who sent pears and cheese from Harry and David. You made our Christmas special. The Admiral doesn’t exchange gifts, but he helps me send out the Sierra Club calendars, so he’s not really a Grinch. I’m glad you all enjoy the wilderness photos and that you have room to fill in your doctor appointments and other engagements. I say this with trepidation, knowing the kind of hell on wheels year that 2015 was for me, but here’s hoping that 2016 can erase all the bad memories of 2015 and that I’ll be hiking again in Toro Park with Zorro – pain free. Is that too much to ask for? I hope not. Happy New Year to you all.

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN: ON THE ROAD AGAIN, EATING OUR WAY THROUGH TWO STATES

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN: ON THE ROAD AGAIN, EATING OUR WAY THROUGH TWO STATES

Let’s start with Mount Lemmon, north of Tucson, Arizona. The Admiral and I had never gone to the top of it. Sue said the very top is blocked off to the public; you have to make reservations to see the fantastic telescope positioned on top of Mount Lemmon. She and Butch did that a year ago, and they had incredible views of faraway galaxies and heavenly bodies. The astronomer who hosted them had taken stunning photos of some of the stars they viewed, and he autographed prints of his photos for them. They decorate the wall in the hallway as you enter their desert home in Vail. Even without the lure of the telescope, the Admiral and I wanted to drive the 30 mile road that goes nearly to the top of Mount Lemmon. It was a gorgeous sunny day, in the 70’s, a little windy, but perfect for the drive. We began our windy journey in a “forest” of saguaro cacti. When we left the saguaros, the landscape became very rocky with hoodoos everywhere and layer upon layer of interesting geological eras exposed to us. The Admiral said that my brother the geologist would have enjoyed himself immensely in this environment. As we made each hairpin turn, new majestic monuments greeted us. I could not take enough photos to do this scenery justice. Each hoodoo deserved its own frame. Then as quickly as they appeared, the red and beige and gray rocks gave way to conifers, a jungle of fir trees with soft needles on the ground beneath them. The temps went down, but it was still sunny with a robin’s egg blue sky overhead. Clouds? Are you kidding? Not on this day. We passed elevation markers 5000, 6000, 7000, and 8000. Finally we reached the barrier across the road to the tippy top. To the left were the ski slopes (closed, no snow) and to the right was the highly touted restaurant (closed on Tuesday). Still, it was the journey to this point that was well worth the hour of driving. There are countless places to drive off the road and take a photo. And for people like us who keep drinking to stay hydrated, there are clean, well-managed restrooms right off the roadway at each climate level. This trip is spectacular. If you are ever in the Tucson area, Rusty and Lois, and all the rest of you easterners, please do yourselves a huge favor and drive up the Mount Lemmon Road of Beauty.

My indoor experiences while visiting my sister were also very gratifying. Sue and I went to two great movies, Bridge of Spies and Steve Jobs. No matter what role he takes on, Tom Hanks becomes the character he plays and you forget he is Tom Hanks of Bosom Buddies or Forrest Gump or Captain Phillips. He was an insurance defense attorney in Bridge of Spies, but he became so much more, as his character grew in strength and courage, rising to every impossible challenge created by the Russians and East Germans to make his efforts to swap prisoners (Abel for Powers and that Princeton grad student) a failure. I lived in West Berlin for a year, the year of the Student Revolution (1967-68). The events in this movie preceded me by five years. We watched the Russians and East Germans actually building the Berlin Wall in the movie. The actor who played Rudolf Abel, the convicted Russian spy, was spot on – Mark Rylance, who is one of the most celebrated Shakespeare actors in the world. “Would it make a difference?” See the movie. It will make a difference.

Another stupendous acting performance was turned in by Michael Fassbender in the movie, Steve Jobs. His assistant, Joanna, was wonderful. I kept wondering which American actress was playing her, and at the end, as the credits rolled, I learned to my amazement that Kate Winslet, speaking perfect “American” had aced this character. Steve Jobs was not likable at all, as compared with Steve Wozniak, who was almost too much of a schlemiel to be likable. But Woz, as played by Seth Rogen, was light years ahead of Jobs in the compassion and decency departments. Fassbender was indeed charismatic in the lead role, but what an asshole Steve Jobs was in both his personal and professional lives.  

When we weren’t supporting the movie theater economy in Tucson, Sue and I and Butch watched movies at home, including Gravity in 3-D. I can’t remember when I last wore special 3 D glasses, but they really made all the objects floating in space float right by my head. Some of the objects did more than “float” – they flew ferociously by and at the space stations destroying them and killing everyone but the Sandra Bullock character, who somehow (with the spiritual help of the ghost of George Clooney) made it back to earth safely. The visual effects in this movie were deserving of an Oscar. Bullock for her acting? Not so much. But she was good in the role, just not riveting. Give me Jessica Chastain for that character,

When not watching movies, Sue kept making one culinary masterpiece after another. We arrived to a counter full of Thanksgiving pies – apple, pumpkin and pecan. The apple and pumpkin were homemade and clearly superior to the pecan. Sue had also made homemade bread and her famous sticky buns with nuts. Yummy! They made for delicious breakfast fare, but Sue also added eggs with ham and peppers on a few mornings. And don’t forget the waffles and maple syrup and really crispy bacon strips. This meant that we didn’t need lunch, and thank God we generally waited until dinner for our next food intake (except for the afternoon movie popcorn). Sue made meatloaf for one dinner, spaghetti and meatballs for another, a roast chicken with all the fixings for yet a third, and did I mention the perfectly grilled hamburgers she provided one of our first nights? I know I’m leaving out something, but there was so much good food coming out of her kitchen, One night we went out to dinner – at Hacienda del Sol. I had a New York steak – okay – and the onion soup was very good. But I couldn’t wait until the next night when Sue would serve up her spaghetti sauce and perfectly heated garlic bread. I don’t even like garlic normally, but that garlic bread was sweet and mellow.

We visited Sue and Butch during our second week of travel. During our first week we drove from Phoenix to Salinas and stayed with our neighbors, Brenda and Royal. Speaking of great meals, the Admiral cooked two doozies right off the bat. The first night he grilled ribs and chicken and barbecued them both. They were both just so tender and tasty. I could have eaten all the chicken he barbecued by myself. Fortunately there were a few leftover pieces that I enjoyed the next day. Then the Admiral went into overdrive and spent several hours making his now world famous onion soup. Yes, the onion soup at the restaurant in Tucson was good, but you haven’t had the best onion soup until you’ve dipped your spoon into a bowl of the Admiral’s sweet onions and gooey cheese. Better yet, dip a slice of French bread into the bowl to sop up all the broth. That’s all you really need in life to be happy – a bowl of the Admiral’s onion soup. After the onion soup we had grilled pork chops cooked to perfection, with salad and apple sauce. Once the Admiral finished preparing and we finished eating those two stellar meals, he turned his attention to the 15 and ½ pound free range Diestel turkey we had bought at Star Market in Salinas. He and Brenda agreed upon a brine recipe, and they brined that turkey into savory, moist meat, both dark and white. Add the side dishes of Brenda’s sweet potato casserole, the Admiral’s stuffing and my humongous green salad (with feta cheese, roasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries – you get the picture) – and we had a very memorable dining experience at the Calkin Moore’s on Harper Canyon Road on Thanksgiving. By the way, I baked two apple pies the night before and indulged myself in eating a slice hot from the oven at about 9 at night. Shelby and Alice brought pumpkin pies and a super-rich chocolate pecan pie for Thanksgiving – add to this Brenda’s deep chocolate birthday cake from November 23 and yes, you can make a strong case for overeating while at Brenda and Royal’s.

Fortunately, I walked a lot with my dog Zorro, either down the road or into the park. I’m not jogging yet, and not walking several miles at a time. But we stay out 30 minutes or so, and it’s just great spending time with him again. He is so good on the leash, as I struggle with my walker over the uneven pavement of the roadway or on to the grassy areas next to the road that he loves to explore. Zorro is a mensch, and he shows all of his thoughts and emotions in his eyes. He does not miss anything – of course, the obvious when we are packing the suitcase to leave. But he does not miss any human interaction and he picks up on all of our insecurities and hesitations. It must be hard being Zorro and absorbing all the feelings of everyone he encounters and trying to adjust his expectations to accommodate our needs. He is very wise. I should have named him Yoda.

These last two weeks were definitely a time to be thankful – for our Harper Canyon friends who care for our house and our dog so well; for my Carmel friend, Sondra, who serves 15 at Thanksgiving with unnatural ease; for my work friend, Chris, who cares for puppies as much as I do and loves to walk them; for the Admiral, who never stops caring for and about me; for Zorro and his soulful eyes; for my sister and her husband, who always go overboard with their hospitality and love (just stay away from politics); for Barbara and Louisa, who always remember me and lift my spirits during the holidays and through the year; for Cathy, who is indomitable and inspirational; for the Admiral, once again, who makes these travels possible and makes my life livable.

We are back on the boat now – hunkering down in the salon and stateroom during a torrential rain. We went from nearly complete dryness and humidity of 7% to 100% humidity with two plane rides. The Admiral is back in shorts and all is well with the world in Key Largo. In the few days we have been back, he has already made jambalaya and SOS and just got the fixings to make beef stroganoff. I cannot eat better. Thank you, dear Admiral, for your love of cooking. Now all we need to do is shake this jet lag, get to sleep before midnight, and clean up Slow Motion for our Christmas guests – the Admiral’s daughters are coming. Yay! They bring so much life to the boat and there is a special sparkle in the Admiral’s eyes when they are here. Mine too. Can’t wait. In the meantime, y’all have yourselves a non–hectic week or two before Christmas. And come visit us in January. We’re planning a boat trip to Key West. You would not want to miss that (especially you, Cathy – see you soon, I hope).

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX: BACK TO MUSKETS! BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS!

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX: BACK TO MUSKETS! BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS!

It’s Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 2015, and so far, there have been no new mass shootings reported on American soil today. What a state of affairs it is that we view each day warily to find out if any more American citizens or their imported spouses have been “radicalized” by ISIS to the point of converting semi-automatic assault weapons into automatic machine guns, stockpiling ammo and building pipe bombs in their garage, under the watchful eyes of their relatives. And if that’s not enough to watch out for: How about the American citizens who arm themselves to the hilt and head to their nearest Planned Parenthood building to wipe out the staff and patients? Then there are the non-ideologues who acquire guns and ammo and go to target practice in order to descend upon our schools to kill children and teachers. But, as “Crazy Don” Trump would say, if only those children had been armed, they could have shot back and saved themselves and others. Oh yes, only in America would there be a very wild and crazy – and loud – minority of men (mostly) screaming for MORE GUNS as the proper response to mass killings by men and women using assault weapons and/or huge magazines and/or very powerful bullets which should be outlawed everywhere. Fight insanity with MORE insanity. That should be “Crazy Don’s” slogan, not “Make America Great Again”.

The Admiral and I were in the desert near Tucson with my sister and brother-in-law when the mass slaying in San Bernardino was committed. At the start, before any investigation began into the shooters, the Admiral said that it was likely the female shooter had instigated the attack. That may turn out to be the case, but today the reports are that one of the people killed in the attack was a devout Jewish man who championed Israel and who had had some heated discussions with the male shooter about Israel. At this point, it appears that the male and female shooters had drunk the jihadist juice and found each other on a dating web site – like minded killers with a common interest in massacring a lot of non-believers in the United States. Where does the 6 month old baby fit into this scenario? Did either one really expect to get out of this alive? We could chalk it up to the lack of birth control or to their narcissistic desire for martyrdom, which annihilated all interest in others, including their own child.

But enough about them. The county employees who were murdered and injured deserve our attention. They did not deserve to die or be wounded. And they should not be criticized or blamed for their own deaths and injuries because they did not carry firearms to the training day and holiday party. The day one has to carry a loaded firearm to work is the day one should find another job, in another country if necessary. Think about the folks you work with too. Would you want any of them to be “packing”? I’m not talking about law enforcement front line jobs – but even in that case, as England has shown, front line police officers need not carry guns to enforce the law. Of course, that’s in a civilized society where there is gun control and gun crimes are a very small part of the crime statistics. Does anyone remember my blog about the history of the 2^nd Amendment, the wording of which was dictated by slave owners? It took a long time – and a very bloody Civil War—to rid ourselves of slavery. How long will it take to rid ourselves of the completely wrong-headed interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment so that we can return to its original intent, which was to allow citizens to join militias to protect the central government, not to hole up in a cabin somewhere with a private armory to have a shootout with federal agents? Talk about standing an idea on its head! James Madison has to be rolling over and over and over in his grave. Read Aaron Burger’s article in the Christian Science Monitor, December 17, 2012, which states in part:

“The weapons with which Madison was familiar were essentially muskets, in addition to rudimentary pistols and rifles. A competent user could generally only take a single wildly inaccurate shot, and then would likely find himself rummaging around with a ram-rod (and a powder bag he had to tear with his teeth) for as much as a minute before being able to take another. There was virtually no way an individual could maim two people before being subdued, let alone 32 as at Virginia Tech, or 26 in Sandy Hook Elementary…”, -- or 35 (14 dead, 21 wounded) in San Bernardino. Burger wrote further: “The beauty of Madison’s musket was that, without being truly dangerous in large scale, it remained effective for personal defense. In addition to the propulsion mechanism, muskets were also outfitted with bayonets for issuing blows at short range, which could be used to subdue an attacker without killing them. When people did die from these weapons, it was often because of lead poisoning or bacterial infection. While the weapons of Madison’s era could be used for offense, and could certainly inflict deadly damage, they were only advantageous in situations involving group combat – not for an individual shooter to inflict quick and wide-scale harm.” (emphasis added)

All right. We’re way beyond muskets, but you get the idea. Muskets were what Madison was thinking of when he wrote the 2^nd Amendment giving us the right to bear arms, in order to support our militia. And so, it is the height of intellectual dishonesty for someone like, say Justice Scalia, to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the 2^nd Amendment to cover the weapons of mass destruction which 21st century shooters obtain and which should be banned. Back to muskets, if you want to be true to the 2^nd Amendment. It was not written to cover assault rifles, and it should not be interpreted to cover assault rifles or any kind of automatic weapon. The musket clearly was not automatic, and Madison clearly did not envision that one person could wipe out an entire classroom or conference room of people with a weapon “protected” by the 2^nd Amendment. No such weapon existed. Therefore, no such right to possess it exists under the 2^nd Amendment. Are we clear?