But what exactly does this have to do with a groovin' Golden Retriever? Absolutely nothing. As someone who grew up with Goldens, I just love this video. LOVE IT!!! And you will too. And that's all I'm gonna say about my dear friends, and that man they might vote for who tortured his Irish Setter on top of his car roof. See? I'm not gonna even say it.
I had lunch yesterday with two Republican women in my area. I happen to know them both (all two of 'em! badoom tsshhhh!) and the topic turned, against my will, to politics (before we got back to the real matter at hand which is local gossip.) I respect their right to that one woman-one vote thingy. And I love who they are as women, mothers, and vibrant members of our community. But Newt, really? Or "actually?" as my teenager might say? Well, it takes all kinds and they think of me as some sort of political nuisance and voter who must be allowed to fill out a ballot, unfortunately. But what exactly does this have to do with a groovin' Golden Retriever? Absolutely nothing. As someone who grew up with Goldens, I just love this video. LOVE IT!!! And you will too. And that's all I'm gonna say about my dear friends, and that man they might vote for who tortured his Irish Setter on top of his car roof. See? I'm not gonna even say it. Fifteen years ago, Harold told me that the world was going to end in 2012. Harold was my therapist. He was my eighth therapist, and the one I’d turned to because the others hadn’t made a dent in my chronic depression and suicidal thoughts. “Harold” isn’t his real name, and he wasn’t really a therapist. He had a PhD in something and was knowledgeable in any number of subjects. Harold only saw people he believed he could help, and you had to be recommended by someone he was treating. If chosen, you had to commit to face the truth, no matter how disturbing. You also had to be willing to drive 100 miles each way on country back roads, to the tiny, remote town where Harold lived and worked in a decayed Charles Addams mansion. Patients committed to Harold, and he to us. His fees were nominal. Weekly sessions could run as long as three hours. Like a hippie Buddha, Harold sat watch over me, as I howled through the crimes of my childhood, finally free to feel the pain and express my soul’s outrage. That I’m alive today, that I’m married to a loving man, that my children are healthy, I owe in large part to Harold. It was sometime in 1997, in a period of dark despair, when Harold told me the world was going to end in 2012. He had studied all the major prophecies, including Nostradamus and the Mayans, and believed there was convergence on this one prediction. So, Harold said, I needn’t worry about suicide because time was running out. He got me. Fifteen years seemed doable. Besides, I wanted to know the end of the story. (If Harold knew how things were going to end, he wasn’t talking.) Through the Bushes and Sarah Palin, the rise of the Money Culture, the death of friends and family, multiple long-distance moves, and personal failures of all kinds, I’ve carried on, believing it was all just temporary. Which of course, it is, with or without Harold’s End of the World. I’ve pretty much lived each day as if it may be my last. I haven’t waited to do anything I really want to do. I have not saved for retirement like a good girl. These days Harold is a 2012 expert on The History Channel. He’s got a tony NY agent and is in talks with James Cameron for a movie idea. He lives part of the year in Prague and may move there. When I miss him, I only have to Google his name. There he is: older, distinguished and now dressed in elegant black with a dapper felt hat instead of the worn, stained sweatshirt I remember. He still has the same twinkle in his eye, as if to say, “Didn’t I warn you to expect the unexpected?” Maybe that means if everyone is talking about 2012 as the end, we’re due to teeter onward for thousands more years. Or maybe not. Here’s to Laura, to you all, and to Harold -- a toast to whatever the year ahead may bring. May we all live in that divine space of mystery, letting go and grabbing hold, in peace and urgency, waiting and not waiting. And here's to you, Viola-Alex, for writing another beautiful essay. I'm so glad Harold came into your life, and even now lets you peak at his. There is comfort in knowing he's all right, even though he might not be right. Thank you! I don't care who you are. I don't care what color your politics, or how big your beef, you Just.Don't.Do.This. (jab your finger in the face of the leader of the free world)...especially if you are this stupid: Are there no manners left? Among anyone? Anywhere? You all know to what I am referring. Share more special Brewer moments in the comments if you wish. I am off to teach people who are one-third her age and have 1/100th of her advantages, yet have more respect for authority or position in their pencil points than Brewer has in her entire bleach bottle. As the Russians say: how can you not be ashamed?
Look, and it can't be seen. Listen, and it can't be heard. Reach, and it can't be grasped. Above, it isn't bright. Below, it isn't dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns ot the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, imagine without an image, subtle beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom. Verse 14 I know, so bad of me. So wrong of me. So not cool of me to say that aloud in the Bay Area. So don't tell anyone I said it. GO ELI! There, I said it again. And I say it in large part because Eli Manning looks so much like my son. Or vice versa. Some sports fan I am! At any rate. I'm working on taxes today and watching you-know-what tomorrow. So for some fun reading, the New Yorkers face off against the San Franciscans in this battle of the newspaper columnists. It makes for fun reading. Enjoy! P.S. Speaking of QBs who got it goin' on. Check out how green is Montana's valley! The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God. Verse 4, A New English Version (Okay, speaking of used up, voids, and birth, I thought I might break my Zen and highlight THIS article to get the conversation started. Perhaps we can focus on the psychology of this type of warfare!) The world is changing faster than a speeding e-reader. But even I, whose book hit #16 in comic fiction on Amazon this weekend, and who has embraced this new media with a passion, love the smell of a new book. I love the feel of a book store, the silence, the smells, the curiosity of everyone in it. Will these independent stores go away entirely? I doubt it. But that debate is carried out daily across the Intertubes. This was sent to me by a dear mystery writer friend and a great lady. We are both looking at the future but don't want to leave the past behind. Feel the joy! I was very fortunate to be invited by friends to hear Dr. Christina Romer speak on the economy and assorted economic topics the other night. I've met her several times, at church, at the grocery store, and at a school our sons once attended. Mrs. Romer is a delightful woman, always smiling, very friendly and approachable. The other night at her son's school, she was disarming and charming as usual. And while she addressed heady subjects with a brilliance that only someone with a CV like THIS can do, Dr. Romer did it with great warmth and to lots of laughter. (In fact, when the moderator of the evening introduced her, and outlined Dr. Romer's education and accomplishments, I turned to my friend and said, "I should just smack myself." What losers most of us in the audience were by comparison!) At any rate, to my regret, I did not take notes. It was too cramped and I could not even move my arms. But I have a few take aways from the two-hour talk and discussion with one of her colleagues at UC Berkeley. The best is about the vote on heath care reform. At 11 o'clock that night, President Obama invited everyone involved with the legislation back to the White House to celebrate on the Truman Balcony. That included even the researchers who worked for Dr. Romer. FLOTUS and the girls were away, and at 1am, POTUS said he was tired and was going to retire for the night. But he invited everyone to stay and even "look around." Well, of course the Truman Balcony is on the second floor, in the private residence. So many took the President up on his offer, and wandered around, even sitting on the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom. A few might have even bounced up and down on it. Great fun was had by all. There were more anecdotes that painted a president who was humane, human, very smart and capable of absorbing immense amounts of information. When she brought him unemployment numbers one month that were staggeringly low, he misunderstood her, thinking she said 110,000 instead of 11,000. When he took in Dr. Romer's correction, the president then hugged her four times and gave her one kiss on the cheek. President Obama is a man interested in facts and analysis, not politicking among his staff or vying for his attention. He wanted the data brought to him and he wanted to hear recommendations and assessment of a situation. Who was right and who was in power did not matter. He then made up his mind based on facts. Dr. Romer one day asked Rahm Emanuel why she was appointed to head up the Council on Economic Advisors. And he pointed out that she was a leading expert on the great American Depression. They figured they might need her again because were this close to seeing history repeating itself. How close? "Terrifyingly close." TARP was the right thing to do and the money has been paid back. But the banks are still not lending sufficiently, and bankruptcy laws prevent them from restructuring primary mortgages in bankruptcy filings. She'd like to see that changed. Administration lawyers are confident that health care reform will stand up to legal challenges. And it is our children who will stand to benefit the most from the specific reforms in the legislation. I wish I could give you more detail on her comments about the economy. But I don't want to make this post any more vague than it already is. And I had to pass/fail economics in college. Though my professor was incredibly handsome. I'll leave off with the assessment that Europe is screwed, absolutely screwed, unless they take more direct action and advice. And if they go down, yes, it will affect us. A final question on Bain Capital was handled with great poise and dexterity. Suffice to say that there are arguments for and against capitalism (my words more or less - hers were far more eloquent.) All in all, I'll say this: I recall waking our son and watching the inauguration in 2009. And I recall clearly seeing Dr. Romer and her husband, David Romer, enter the balcony at the Capital where they would sit with other cabinet members and distinguished guests. They were both beaming, from ear to ear, and 3,000 miles away I felt what must have been the "shock and awe" of being part of something great. Now that Mrs. Romer is home and back at Cal, I still see her beaming. Even if it's in the produce aisle at our local market. Now, go look at her CV and tell me if you want to smack yourself upside the head with me. What a loser. I need to go work on the second novel! Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking. Center your country in the Tao and evil will have no power. Not that it isn't there, but you'll be able to step out of its way. Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself. Verse 60, Stephen Mitchell New English Version I have a lot of ambivalence about the common usage of the word "santorum" (is it capitalized as a noun?) In 2003, I was an avid reader of the East Bay Express and had even written a very popular, 7,500 word cover story for them. My secret pleasure was reading the sex column in the back pages written by Dan Savage. Wow, did I learn things! Savage was so outre, so bold, so progressive in his sexual advice. I simply had no idea... I recall clearly the day I read the answer to the question about what Santorum really means. And as most of you know by now, the answer wasn't pretty. Little did I know that sitting there in that cafe, I was looking a phrase that would go viral and enter our modern lexicon. To this day, I don't know how I feel about this definition. Don't misunderstand me: Rick Santorum's position on gays is repulsive. Bestiality? Excuse me? My husband thinks the new definition of the man's name is hilarious and justified. I don't know. I just don't find my self laughing out loud about it. Santorum's political positions are insane. His character is creepy, as are some of his past actions, in my opinion. But the word. Really, must we? How do you feel about "santorum"? |
Laura NovakReporter, Author, Blogger, and Mother...
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