Washington certainly is a bottomless pit when it comes nutty behavior. Politicians dip deep into the well of insanity and never fail to bring home the crazy in gigantic trainloads. It would probably be a little more amusing if they weren't dicking around with billions and trillions of our dollars and basically screwing with the future of the entire planet and every living creature on it. Things have been getting a little tedious lately with all the sex scandals, such as South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and disgraced Presidential candidate John Edwards, among many others. Let's face it - hearing about old white guys getting their swerve on and acting like hormone-crazed frat boys rates pretty high on the "ick" scale. I'm an old white guy and I think it's pretty unsavory. But occasionally the denizens of Capitol Hill outdo themselves when it comes to massive silliness and a true spectacle emerges for our entertainment and edification.
That's what happened at the Health Care Summit held yesterday in DC. President Obama got together with a roomful of Democrats and Republicans, ostensibly for a come-to-Jesus meeting where they would thrash out the different philosophies that have been colliding recently and preventing any real progress in fixing our ailing health care system. The Republicans have been complaining that they've been shut out of the whole process and Obama said, you want to come to the table to talk? - fine, we'll do just that. But instead of hammering out some kind of compromise that both sides would be able to support, however unenthusiastically, what we got were both sides digging in their heels and preening and posturing for the camera, and saying precious little of any use.
The live television coverage let us sit in on this confab, which truly did look like the staff meeting from hell. On one end we had the unnaturally orange Representative John Boehner, or John Boner as I like to call him, pontificating and blustering in true Congressional fashion while saying absolutely nothing. On the other side we had Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who looks like he should be managing an H&R Block office in Akron, getting ready to work on someone's taxes. In the middle was Obama, uncomfortable with his role as ringmaster in this hellish Cirque du Batshit. Next to him was Vice President Joe Biden, looking and sounding surprisingly cogent and on the ball. Joe Biden looks like your uncle who always seemed to have had a little too much to drink even at 8 in the morning, and who would laugh at his own jokes and screw up everything no matter how simple. When Biden appears to be the voice of reason and sensibility in any gathering, you know things are on the verge of heading south in a big way.
But there were a couple of fun things to watch in this whole seven-hour grindfest. One was Obama sniping with his former Presidential rival John McCain. Obama had to tell McCain that the "campaign was over" and he should drop his tired blathering. McCain cackled in his usual cringe-inducing, pseudo-pedophile way and said that was something he was "reminded of every day." I bet he is. Why anyone gives this silly old man any airtime at all is beyond me. He looks like a character from The Muppet Show that was created to be an understudy for Statler and Waldorf, the two old hecklers in the balcony, but was discarded because it was too creepy.
But the most amazing thing was a brilliant segment on yesterday's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" show. They put together little snippets of the speeches the Republicans gave at the summit, and it clearly and hilariously showed them repeatedly using the exact same words and language. With robotic consistency that would make the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica jealous, they shamelessly used the same phrases over and over again, which consisted of "start over," "clean sheet of paper," and "step back." It was pretty eye-opening to see how thoroughly rehearsed and coached the Republicans were. It's like they had been drilled to within an inch of their lives like third-graders learning math tables and were told, probably by Darth Cheney, that if they strayed one iota from the party line they would dissolve into a messy puddle of goo like the Nazi Ark-snatchers at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It was plainly obvious that they weren't saying what they truly felt and thought, but were slavishly parroting what their puppet masters told them to say. In a time and place where we really needed the participants to be actively engaged in finding a solution to possibly the biggest crisis we have to face today, what we got was the same-old-same-old, much to no one's surprise.
And President Obama still does not get it. For some reason he still clings, Don Quixote-like, to his dream of bipartisanship even though it's been made painfully clear over and over again that the Republicans have no intention at all of cooperating. They only want Obama and the Democrats to fail, no matter how much it would cost the country. Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a bipartisan agreement is both irresistible and unattainable for Obama. The Republicans have always said that it's their way or the highway, but Obama still tries to hold out hope that they'll come on board. Now the Republicans are spitting mad that the Democrats will push the health care overhaul through using the process of reconciliation, which is a way of combining the Senate and House health care bills and only requires a simple 51-vote majority, instead of the inconvenient 60-vote supermajority. When Republican Lamar Alexander tried to do a pre-emptive strike and chastised the Democrats for threatening to use reconciliation, Harry Reid in an amazingly righteous show of cojones told the Repubs to STFU because since the 1980s, reconciliation has been used more than 20 times mostly by Republicans, and if it was good enough for Republicans in the past it's good enough for Democrats now.
Well, the show is over and the Health Care Summit of 2010 is history. Comedic history, but history nonetheless. What Obama said was absolutely true, and that is the American people do not need another year of pointless, mind-numbing debate, which is what it would take to come up with another health care bill from scratch, as the Republicans want. We simply can't afford to keep the status-quo; health care has to be fixed and even the stripped-down, neutered bill we have now is better than nothing. We can only hope the Democrats can find a way to get this done, since the Republicans will not lift a finger to help and will in fact obstruct at every opportunity. They are truly the "Party of No," as in No Brains, No Help, and No Morals.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Winter Into Spring
Here in the desert our winter season doesn't last very long. Usually it starts around Thanksgiving and runs through December and January. By Valentine's Day, the weather has started to feel springlike, blossoms start to appear on trees and flowers begin to pop up on outdoor shrubs. Winter keeps a tentative, unsure grip on us, preferring to exert its chilly power in fits and starts, sending us scurrying for our sweaters and flannel bedsheets in between plenty of pleasant, sunny days.
In many parts of the country our excuse for winter weather hardly qualifies as such, and in fact would be considered balmy April weather. I remember growing up in western Pennsylvania when we would get snowfalls in late November and winter would lock us down in a death grip until Easter. There would be no doubt in your mind at all the winter was in charge - you sometimes did not see the sun for weeks on end, and the gloomy, leaden skies complemented the somber dark brown of the trees, devoid of their green leaves. The days were short, listless and gray, and the nights seemed endless, when temperatures plummeted into single-digit-or-below range, and everything seemed trapped in a vise-grip of ice and snow. When winter finally decided that it was time to give it up and move on, it grudgingly released its grip, seeming to be unsure of letting go and always ready to snap us back into an icy prison in the blink of an eye. I recall Sundays when the afternoon temp would get up to maybe 40 degrees F., and the first couple inches of ground in our back yard would thaw out, leaving a squishy layer of mud everywhere that would swallow up your shoes if you took one misstep. There would be such a fragrance of moisture, dampness and new life in the air, as the soil woke up and regenerated itself. Then at night the full moon would shine brilliantly high up in the dark sky with a frigid, crystalline light as the ground would re-freeze and we would repeat this cycle again the next day.
No such luck here in the desert, where the best that winter can do is maybe force the nighttime temps down into the mid- to upper-twenties for a couple of hours, and then play havoc at the airport when early-morning flights are delayed until the sun comes up and melts the frost off the airplane windshields, things like de-icers being no use to us normally. This year we've been particularly favored with a lot of rainy weather (with more to come this weekend, I've heard) which has made the weeds in my yard grow like crazy, and has given the open desert all around us a distinctly lush, green tinge.
Up in the starry sky, the seasons inexorably plod along as the earth cruises in its orbit around the sun and the spring constellations herald the approaching equinox. Leo the Lion leaps up off the eastern horizon and halfway into the sky in a single, powerful jump. Right behind him is Virgo the Virgin, stretched out in a languid sprawl low in the southeast, as if she's deciding whether or not to get up off her fainting couch and grace us with her presence. Invisible to our eyes, Virgo contains one of the largest objects in the known universe, the Virgo Galactic Supercluster, a gravitationally-bound group of hundreds of galaxies, whose combined gravity can be felt in every corner of space. Shortly after dusk the famous winter constellation of Orion, one of the handsomest and most conspicuous constellations in the sky after the Big Dipper, is riding high in the south, followed by his ever-faithful dog Canis Major, and protecting the skittish, shy Lepus, the celestial Hare, crouching at his feet. Eventually Orion will sink into the western horizon for a six-month nap, and if you stay up long enough and you get to see right before dawn Scorpio the Scorpion raising its pincers above the horizon as its blood-red heart Antares briefly comes into view before being swallowed by the sunrise.
But for me the sure sign of the passage of time is the appearance of the second-brightest star in the night sky Canopus very low in the south. Canopus is in the constellation of Carina, the keel of the ship Argo, and it is so far south that from here, it pops above the horizon for just a couple of hours before it dips back down below and disappears. Canopus is only visible in the evening for a month or so, and does not show itself again until next February.
So it looks like we blew through another winter season here in Paradise. I wish it would last a little bit longer, because winter does have it own, understated charms. A little more winter would be a welcome buffer against the vicious, snarling devil-beast that is summer, which grabs hold of us with a terrifying ferocity and forces us to drastically alter our lifestyle and live by its draconian dictates for nearly five long, grueling months.
In many parts of the country our excuse for winter weather hardly qualifies as such, and in fact would be considered balmy April weather. I remember growing up in western Pennsylvania when we would get snowfalls in late November and winter would lock us down in a death grip until Easter. There would be no doubt in your mind at all the winter was in charge - you sometimes did not see the sun for weeks on end, and the gloomy, leaden skies complemented the somber dark brown of the trees, devoid of their green leaves. The days were short, listless and gray, and the nights seemed endless, when temperatures plummeted into single-digit-or-below range, and everything seemed trapped in a vise-grip of ice and snow. When winter finally decided that it was time to give it up and move on, it grudgingly released its grip, seeming to be unsure of letting go and always ready to snap us back into an icy prison in the blink of an eye. I recall Sundays when the afternoon temp would get up to maybe 40 degrees F., and the first couple inches of ground in our back yard would thaw out, leaving a squishy layer of mud everywhere that would swallow up your shoes if you took one misstep. There would be such a fragrance of moisture, dampness and new life in the air, as the soil woke up and regenerated itself. Then at night the full moon would shine brilliantly high up in the dark sky with a frigid, crystalline light as the ground would re-freeze and we would repeat this cycle again the next day.
No such luck here in the desert, where the best that winter can do is maybe force the nighttime temps down into the mid- to upper-twenties for a couple of hours, and then play havoc at the airport when early-morning flights are delayed until the sun comes up and melts the frost off the airplane windshields, things like de-icers being no use to us normally. This year we've been particularly favored with a lot of rainy weather (with more to come this weekend, I've heard) which has made the weeds in my yard grow like crazy, and has given the open desert all around us a distinctly lush, green tinge.
Up in the starry sky, the seasons inexorably plod along as the earth cruises in its orbit around the sun and the spring constellations herald the approaching equinox. Leo the Lion leaps up off the eastern horizon and halfway into the sky in a single, powerful jump. Right behind him is Virgo the Virgin, stretched out in a languid sprawl low in the southeast, as if she's deciding whether or not to get up off her fainting couch and grace us with her presence. Invisible to our eyes, Virgo contains one of the largest objects in the known universe, the Virgo Galactic Supercluster, a gravitationally-bound group of hundreds of galaxies, whose combined gravity can be felt in every corner of space. Shortly after dusk the famous winter constellation of Orion, one of the handsomest and most conspicuous constellations in the sky after the Big Dipper, is riding high in the south, followed by his ever-faithful dog Canis Major, and protecting the skittish, shy Lepus, the celestial Hare, crouching at his feet. Eventually Orion will sink into the western horizon for a six-month nap, and if you stay up long enough and you get to see right before dawn Scorpio the Scorpion raising its pincers above the horizon as its blood-red heart Antares briefly comes into view before being swallowed by the sunrise.
But for me the sure sign of the passage of time is the appearance of the second-brightest star in the night sky Canopus very low in the south. Canopus is in the constellation of Carina, the keel of the ship Argo, and it is so far south that from here, it pops above the horizon for just a couple of hours before it dips back down below and disappears. Canopus is only visible in the evening for a month or so, and does not show itself again until next February.
So it looks like we blew through another winter season here in Paradise. I wish it would last a little bit longer, because winter does have it own, understated charms. A little more winter would be a welcome buffer against the vicious, snarling devil-beast that is summer, which grabs hold of us with a terrifying ferocity and forces us to drastically alter our lifestyle and live by its draconian dictates for nearly five long, grueling months.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
What a Blight!
We've all gotten pretty used to ridiculous, completely senseless things happening in government at the federal level. As a matter of fact, it makes the news when someone says or does something that actually makes sense. On the state level, a fair number of idiotic things happen but that's due mostly to the bad genetics and lack of education of the backward, inbred Neanderthals that somehow get elected to the Arizona legislature, sometimes over and over again. But much less frequent are blatant displays of undiluted stupidity at the local government level, which generally stays off everyone's radar as long as the garbage gets picked up regularly and the water keeps running. But when some local government agency does jump the rails, they bring home the crazy in big huge buckets, and it is something to see.
Such is the case with Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department (NSD), a local government entity entrusted with ensuring that Phoenix remains the "Best Run City in the World." Their website says their mission is to "to preserve and improve the physical, social and economic health of Phoenix neighborhoods, support neighborhood self-reliance, and enhance the quality of life for residents..." They are committed to "building vibrant neighborhoods" and they regard their ''investment in healthy neighborhoods [as] an investment in our residents, a sense of community and shared pride." That's some heady stuff right there, and a noble venture if there ever was one. Let's take a little look at the Phoenix NSD in action - shall we? - and see exactly what it is they're doing to make the fifth largest metropolitan area in the nation such gosh-darned wonderful place to live.
Consider if you will the recent experience of Erika and Billy, longtime residents and undisputed good citizens. They came home one day and found a notice of violation from the NSD waiting for them. What heinous crime did these thoughtless scofflaws commit which disrupted the peace and serenity of their lovely neighborhood, turned it into an unsightly disgusting blight and prompted the NSD to take such a stern action? Now brace yourself, you may want to put a pillow or two on the floor in case you take a header off the couch from sheer shock. They had a couple of boxes near their front entrance, and two palm fronds on the ground. Oh, the humanity! You have to understand, too, that Erika and Billy have a huge, wide front yard and the entrance to their home is set back a good 30-40 feet from the street. So the boxes were not right next to the street where they could offend the delicate sensibilities of everyone who stumbled by. You had to really take a good look to even see them. And the recent rainy, windy weather caused a lot of things other than palm fronds to fall on the ground.
The NSD notice said that someone reported their property for a possible violation and that an inspection would be made in the near future. If this horrible effrontery to decency was still on display then a formal violation would be issued. The notice also stated that the citizen-snitch who ratted on them "might be anonymous." Oh really? Does anyone think that any of the neighbors would really give a serious crap about a couple of boxes and palm fronds? Does anyone think that people really have time to waste caring about pointless nonsense such as that? Or do you think that what actually happened is that someone in the surrounding area got busted for some kind of violation and the NSD made it their business to prowl around just looking for things to write up. That's some kind of "anonymous" source. And they obviously didn't care how stupid, trivial and asinine the violation might be.
This is how the city of Phoenix is squandering our hard-earned tax dollars - harassing law-abiding, tax-paying citizens with utterly moronic, monumentally stupid things like citations for boxes and a couple of palm fronds. This is what the NSD wastes their time and our money on, at a time when city budget deficits are so dire that policemen, firemen and other public service workers - you know, people who actually do something useful and valuable every day - are in serious danger of losing their jobs. At a time when youth programs, senior citizen programs and libraries are either having their hours cut back or are being eliminated altogether, our tax dollars are wasted paying the salaries of a bunch of pointy-headed dimwits who have nothing better to do with their lives but root around looking for things to write up as violations. At a time when the city council recently passed a tax of 2% on food purchases, to take effect in April, because Phoenix is so poor and has no money.
Wouldn't anyone with normal sensibilities be deeply embarrassed to cite as a blight violation a couple of boxes of rabbit supplies and two palm fronds? You'd think so, but apparently the NSD employees have very little shame or self-esteem and even less common sense. How pathetic it is, in a city where you can easily drive anywhere and within minutes find home after home with enormous piles of garbage and tattered furniture and useless appliances on their front entrances, that the NSD instead chooses to target a home with a couple of boxes and palm fronds. I would rather be unemployed and on welfare than demean and humiliate myself with such a worthless, pointless excuse for a job.
The bottom line is this: Before one person from the fire department or police department loses their job due to budget cuts, and before one library or one senior citizen center cuts back its hours, they should eliminate every person and every position from the NSD. If this city is supposedly run so damned well, they will stop wasting our money on stupid agencies like the NSD and spend it on things that really make sense and enhance the quality of life of its citizens.
Such is the case with Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department (NSD), a local government entity entrusted with ensuring that Phoenix remains the "Best Run City in the World." Their website says their mission is to "to preserve and improve the physical, social and economic health of Phoenix neighborhoods, support neighborhood self-reliance, and enhance the quality of life for residents..." They are committed to "building vibrant neighborhoods" and they regard their ''investment in healthy neighborhoods [as] an investment in our residents, a sense of community and shared pride." That's some heady stuff right there, and a noble venture if there ever was one. Let's take a little look at the Phoenix NSD in action - shall we? - and see exactly what it is they're doing to make the fifth largest metropolitan area in the nation such gosh-darned wonderful place to live.
Consider if you will the recent experience of Erika and Billy, longtime residents and undisputed good citizens. They came home one day and found a notice of violation from the NSD waiting for them. What heinous crime did these thoughtless scofflaws commit which disrupted the peace and serenity of their lovely neighborhood, turned it into an unsightly disgusting blight and prompted the NSD to take such a stern action? Now brace yourself, you may want to put a pillow or two on the floor in case you take a header off the couch from sheer shock. They had a couple of boxes near their front entrance, and two palm fronds on the ground. Oh, the humanity! You have to understand, too, that Erika and Billy have a huge, wide front yard and the entrance to their home is set back a good 30-40 feet from the street. So the boxes were not right next to the street where they could offend the delicate sensibilities of everyone who stumbled by. You had to really take a good look to even see them. And the recent rainy, windy weather caused a lot of things other than palm fronds to fall on the ground.
The NSD notice said that someone reported their property for a possible violation and that an inspection would be made in the near future. If this horrible effrontery to decency was still on display then a formal violation would be issued. The notice also stated that the citizen-snitch who ratted on them "might be anonymous." Oh really? Does anyone think that any of the neighbors would really give a serious crap about a couple of boxes and palm fronds? Does anyone think that people really have time to waste caring about pointless nonsense such as that? Or do you think that what actually happened is that someone in the surrounding area got busted for some kind of violation and the NSD made it their business to prowl around just looking for things to write up. That's some kind of "anonymous" source. And they obviously didn't care how stupid, trivial and asinine the violation might be.
This is how the city of Phoenix is squandering our hard-earned tax dollars - harassing law-abiding, tax-paying citizens with utterly moronic, monumentally stupid things like citations for boxes and a couple of palm fronds. This is what the NSD wastes their time and our money on, at a time when city budget deficits are so dire that policemen, firemen and other public service workers - you know, people who actually do something useful and valuable every day - are in serious danger of losing their jobs. At a time when youth programs, senior citizen programs and libraries are either having their hours cut back or are being eliminated altogether, our tax dollars are wasted paying the salaries of a bunch of pointy-headed dimwits who have nothing better to do with their lives but root around looking for things to write up as violations. At a time when the city council recently passed a tax of 2% on food purchases, to take effect in April, because Phoenix is so poor and has no money.
Wouldn't anyone with normal sensibilities be deeply embarrassed to cite as a blight violation a couple of boxes of rabbit supplies and two palm fronds? You'd think so, but apparently the NSD employees have very little shame or self-esteem and even less common sense. How pathetic it is, in a city where you can easily drive anywhere and within minutes find home after home with enormous piles of garbage and tattered furniture and useless appliances on their front entrances, that the NSD instead chooses to target a home with a couple of boxes and palm fronds. I would rather be unemployed and on welfare than demean and humiliate myself with such a worthless, pointless excuse for a job.
The bottom line is this: Before one person from the fire department or police department loses their job due to budget cuts, and before one library or one senior citizen center cuts back its hours, they should eliminate every person and every position from the NSD. If this city is supposedly run so damned well, they will stop wasting our money on stupid agencies like the NSD and spend it on things that really make sense and enhance the quality of life of its citizens.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Slow-Motion Train Wreck
The drama of John Edwards' fall from grace continues to spin hilariously, tragically out of control. A galaxy-class train wreck which hasn't yet reached its peak, the sordid, tawdry details just keep on coming, like Cheerios rolling out of the General Mills ovens. It still amazes, confounds and delights the rest of us who sort of have the normal ration of morals.
Former campaign aide and snubbed bromance-partner Andrew Young is working the talk shows with a vengeance and intensity normally reserved for the publicists of a young Hollywood starlet who somehow forgot that wearing panties is a fairly good idea when you are getting in and out of cars. His book detailing the whole tacky affair is due out tomorrow and it's sure to be a top-seller, if not a cultural milestone, just like the tell-all book "Game Change" that came out a couple weeks ago, spilling the behind-the-scenes dirt of the 2008 presidential campaign.
It seems as if the American public cannot get enough of highly-detailed accounts of the scandalous behavior of politicians. That may be due in part to the fact that there is no scarcity of this scandalous behavior and in the hyperactive, instantaneous news cycle of the internet and cable television, we are constantly bombarded by all kinds of ludicrous conduct practically the minute they see the light of day. Maybe Americans have made up their minds long ago that politicians are vile loathsome pigs and every new report of love children or illicit trysts just reinforces and validates that opinion. Or maybe it's like watching the audition shows of "American Idol" - seeing legions of the terminally crazy lose their minds in a very public fashion make us feel better about our own lives. Or maybe, I like scandals because they give me reason to use cool words like "tacky," "tawdry," and "sordid." Whatever the reason, political scandals are like media crack-cocaine, and that monkey shows no sign of getting off our backs anytime soon.
But once we get past the sadly-obvious fact that the Edwards situation has more cheesiness than a Wisconsin state fair, we begin to see the debris field of broken lives and hearts, of promises and confidences betrayed, and marriages and families torn asunder by conduct of the most selfish and thoughtless kind. When stuff like that hits the fan, everybody gets splattered with something nasty. Even cancer-striken Elizabeth Edwards, who throughout most of the emerging scandal was sympathetically cast as the Wronged Woman, has been portrayed as a shrieking, batshit-crazy harpy.
A scandal of this magnitude requires an enormous, highly elaborate web of lies and deceit to contain it. It takes on a life of its own and rapidly becomes unsustainable. Even the most carefully-constructed house of cards has to collapse under its own weight, and that is what we are witnessing now. Apparently Edwards and his erstwhile collaborators thought they could get away with something, but the harder they tried to keep it under wraps the more it started to trickle out. I don't know how Edwards expects his children to be able to weather this whole situation. They are what soldiers call "collateral damage," that is, innocent bystanders who get hurt solely because they were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place when everything goes to hell. And what about this "love child?" To me the most outrageous, immortal aspect of this whole thing is that Edwards tried to get Young to assume paternity for the child. It's completely astonishing to me that you would deliberately lie about who is a child's father. Someday she would have discovered the truth, and what a horrible, life-shattering revelation that would be. I could not even imagine living through something like that.
So, when we last saw John Edwards he was wandering through the pulverized landscape of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, trying to find himself some sort of redemption in the rubble and tragedy, a very apt metaphor for his political dreams. That was probably the only place he could find people more miserable than he is. The big difference is that the people of Haiti did nothing to deserve their current predicament, the senile babbling of Pat Robertson notwithstanding. Edwards, on the other hand, did everything he could to deserve his sorry fate, and I have absolutely no sympathy for him. I'm saving my sympathy for the children of the Edwards' and the Youngs, who have perfect examples of how responsible adults do NOT behave.
Former campaign aide and snubbed bromance-partner Andrew Young is working the talk shows with a vengeance and intensity normally reserved for the publicists of a young Hollywood starlet who somehow forgot that wearing panties is a fairly good idea when you are getting in and out of cars. His book detailing the whole tacky affair is due out tomorrow and it's sure to be a top-seller, if not a cultural milestone, just like the tell-all book "Game Change" that came out a couple weeks ago, spilling the behind-the-scenes dirt of the 2008 presidential campaign.
It seems as if the American public cannot get enough of highly-detailed accounts of the scandalous behavior of politicians. That may be due in part to the fact that there is no scarcity of this scandalous behavior and in the hyperactive, instantaneous news cycle of the internet and cable television, we are constantly bombarded by all kinds of ludicrous conduct practically the minute they see the light of day. Maybe Americans have made up their minds long ago that politicians are vile loathsome pigs and every new report of love children or illicit trysts just reinforces and validates that opinion. Or maybe it's like watching the audition shows of "American Idol" - seeing legions of the terminally crazy lose their minds in a very public fashion make us feel better about our own lives. Or maybe, I like scandals because they give me reason to use cool words like "tacky," "tawdry," and "sordid." Whatever the reason, political scandals are like media crack-cocaine, and that monkey shows no sign of getting off our backs anytime soon.
But once we get past the sadly-obvious fact that the Edwards situation has more cheesiness than a Wisconsin state fair, we begin to see the debris field of broken lives and hearts, of promises and confidences betrayed, and marriages and families torn asunder by conduct of the most selfish and thoughtless kind. When stuff like that hits the fan, everybody gets splattered with something nasty. Even cancer-striken Elizabeth Edwards, who throughout most of the emerging scandal was sympathetically cast as the Wronged Woman, has been portrayed as a shrieking, batshit-crazy harpy.
A scandal of this magnitude requires an enormous, highly elaborate web of lies and deceit to contain it. It takes on a life of its own and rapidly becomes unsustainable. Even the most carefully-constructed house of cards has to collapse under its own weight, and that is what we are witnessing now. Apparently Edwards and his erstwhile collaborators thought they could get away with something, but the harder they tried to keep it under wraps the more it started to trickle out. I don't know how Edwards expects his children to be able to weather this whole situation. They are what soldiers call "collateral damage," that is, innocent bystanders who get hurt solely because they were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place when everything goes to hell. And what about this "love child?" To me the most outrageous, immortal aspect of this whole thing is that Edwards tried to get Young to assume paternity for the child. It's completely astonishing to me that you would deliberately lie about who is a child's father. Someday she would have discovered the truth, and what a horrible, life-shattering revelation that would be. I could not even imagine living through something like that.
So, when we last saw John Edwards he was wandering through the pulverized landscape of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, trying to find himself some sort of redemption in the rubble and tragedy, a very apt metaphor for his political dreams. That was probably the only place he could find people more miserable than he is. The big difference is that the people of Haiti did nothing to deserve their current predicament, the senile babbling of Pat Robertson notwithstanding. Edwards, on the other hand, did everything he could to deserve his sorry fate, and I have absolutely no sympathy for him. I'm saving my sympathy for the children of the Edwards' and the Youngs, who have perfect examples of how responsible adults do NOT behave.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Apocalypse Now!
Anybody who thinks living in the desert is boring needs to come and visit when we are having one of our crazy weather weeks, like we are now. It's true during the overwhelming majority of the year our weather is consistent to the point of being boring - for long periods of time we are saddled with blue, cloudless skies, warm-to-hot temperatures and a delightfully dry climate. It's during the summer monsoon season and in the current mid-winter rainy spell when our Chamber-of-Commerce weather takes a hike and we get something completely different.
You need to remember this is a place where even a 30% chance of getting less than a tenth of an inch of rain gets everyone really excited and giddy with anticipation. So when the Rain Gods decide to bestow copious quantities of their liquid blessings on us - presumably to make up for denying us even a trace of precious moisture for as long as 180 consecutive days - it is a big, big deal. The local news media have gone into full-on apocalypse mode and the weather service has been issuing flash-flood warnings every five minutes. The weather people are all over TV predicting a possibility of getting half a year's worth of rain this week alone, and they are fairly squealing with delight and shivering with apprehension at the same time. Good times!
So while we are preoccupied with actually getting wet when we take a step outside, there has been a lot of craziness going on in the real world. The aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti continues to loom large and ugly before the world, as rescue and relief agencies scramble in a desperate attempt to contain the terrible humanitarian disaster. Luckily we are not in the middle of hurricane season, because I could not imagine what would happen if a major hurricane started to bear down on that most unlucky place.
But another earthquake, this one of a political nature, happened on Tuesday when Republican Scott Brown scored an unexpected victory in a race to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Such a victory was pretty much ruled out as wildly impossible just a few short weeks ago, when Democrat Martha Coakley had a double-digit lead in the polls which was regarded as insurmountable. So she decided to take an extended Christmas vacation while her opponent tirelessly worked the campaign trail. That may turn out to be the most expensive Christmas vacation ever for the Democrats, because Brown's election shattered the Democrats' sixty-seat supermajority in the Senate, giving the Republicans carte blanche to filibuster everything except the brand of toilet tissue used in the Senate rest rooms.
And filibuster they shall, with Obama's centerpiece health care reform legislation as target numero uno. How incredibly sad for this country that the one, best chance we had at fixing the horrendously broken health care system pivoted on this one election. The Republicans are almost delirious with joy and are making no attempt at all to conceal their glee at this major setback. Not only is losing the seat extremely painful for the Democrats, but particularly galling is the irony that it is Ted Kennedy's seat, who was the main champion of health care reform for most of his career. Blame is being flung far and wide, although most pundits agree that a deeply incompetent, totally mismanaged campaign by Coakley was the main cause of the failure. This is very very bad news for Democrats.
Brown's victory is bad enough, but today it was announced that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be able to spend money in political campaigns. Let's review, shall we: Our electoral system is already choked and corrupted beyond measure by corporate lobbyists of all types, and we all realize that's a big problem. So what should we do? Oh, I know, said the Supreme Court: Let's open up the wonderful world of campaign spending to the big corporations and allow them even more latitude to influence and corrupt the elections, large and small, in this country. Freedom of speech issue, said the Supremes. Hey, news flash, you crotchety old farts: People have freedom of speech, corporations don't. What is so hard about that? Corporations aren't people, and they should not be afforded freedom of speech protection. One needs only to view one of the slanted, ridiculous ads for something called "Clean Coal" - a complete contradiction if there ever was one - to get some idea of the heights of idiocy this will lead to.
Had enough depressing news? Let's wallow in a little more, and take a look at the strange case of John Edwards. Former Senator and presidential hopeful, Edwards was regarded as a rising Democratic star with a long, bright future in front of him until he decided to cheat on his cancer-striken wife and have an affair with a filmmaker. When word of the affair was leaked, Edwards got on every media outlet he could and denied, denied and denied some more. When rumors started spreading about him fathering a child with his mistress, Edwards donned the cloak of Righteous Indignation and proclaimed far and wide across the land that the story was utterly and completely free of merit. Today, he backtracked on all that and admitted yes indeed, everything was true. Apparently the upcoming tell-all book by a former campaign aide which will assert that Edwards offered to pay hush money for the rest of his life if he assumed paternity of the child in question (which he did) prompted Edwards to 'fess up to his tacky indiscretion.
I think the part that bothers people, including me, the most is the ease and facility with which Edwards deliberately and with all premeditation lied to the entire country repeatedly by denying something he knew full well had happened. This is why people have no respect for politicians nowadays, because they prove themselves to be compulsive, adroit and inveterate liars over and over again, until they are backed up against the wall and have no choice but to admit their sins. How extremely sad we have people of such dismally low morals in high public places.
And the rain keeps falling outside on the dry dusty desert, from a featureless gray sky, trying but not quite able to wash away our sins.
You need to remember this is a place where even a 30% chance of getting less than a tenth of an inch of rain gets everyone really excited and giddy with anticipation. So when the Rain Gods decide to bestow copious quantities of their liquid blessings on us - presumably to make up for denying us even a trace of precious moisture for as long as 180 consecutive days - it is a big, big deal. The local news media have gone into full-on apocalypse mode and the weather service has been issuing flash-flood warnings every five minutes. The weather people are all over TV predicting a possibility of getting half a year's worth of rain this week alone, and they are fairly squealing with delight and shivering with apprehension at the same time. Good times!
So while we are preoccupied with actually getting wet when we take a step outside, there has been a lot of craziness going on in the real world. The aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti continues to loom large and ugly before the world, as rescue and relief agencies scramble in a desperate attempt to contain the terrible humanitarian disaster. Luckily we are not in the middle of hurricane season, because I could not imagine what would happen if a major hurricane started to bear down on that most unlucky place.
But another earthquake, this one of a political nature, happened on Tuesday when Republican Scott Brown scored an unexpected victory in a race to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Such a victory was pretty much ruled out as wildly impossible just a few short weeks ago, when Democrat Martha Coakley had a double-digit lead in the polls which was regarded as insurmountable. So she decided to take an extended Christmas vacation while her opponent tirelessly worked the campaign trail. That may turn out to be the most expensive Christmas vacation ever for the Democrats, because Brown's election shattered the Democrats' sixty-seat supermajority in the Senate, giving the Republicans carte blanche to filibuster everything except the brand of toilet tissue used in the Senate rest rooms.
And filibuster they shall, with Obama's centerpiece health care reform legislation as target numero uno. How incredibly sad for this country that the one, best chance we had at fixing the horrendously broken health care system pivoted on this one election. The Republicans are almost delirious with joy and are making no attempt at all to conceal their glee at this major setback. Not only is losing the seat extremely painful for the Democrats, but particularly galling is the irony that it is Ted Kennedy's seat, who was the main champion of health care reform for most of his career. Blame is being flung far and wide, although most pundits agree that a deeply incompetent, totally mismanaged campaign by Coakley was the main cause of the failure. This is very very bad news for Democrats.
Brown's victory is bad enough, but today it was announced that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be able to spend money in political campaigns. Let's review, shall we: Our electoral system is already choked and corrupted beyond measure by corporate lobbyists of all types, and we all realize that's a big problem. So what should we do? Oh, I know, said the Supreme Court: Let's open up the wonderful world of campaign spending to the big corporations and allow them even more latitude to influence and corrupt the elections, large and small, in this country. Freedom of speech issue, said the Supremes. Hey, news flash, you crotchety old farts: People have freedom of speech, corporations don't. What is so hard about that? Corporations aren't people, and they should not be afforded freedom of speech protection. One needs only to view one of the slanted, ridiculous ads for something called "Clean Coal" - a complete contradiction if there ever was one - to get some idea of the heights of idiocy this will lead to.
Had enough depressing news? Let's wallow in a little more, and take a look at the strange case of John Edwards. Former Senator and presidential hopeful, Edwards was regarded as a rising Democratic star with a long, bright future in front of him until he decided to cheat on his cancer-striken wife and have an affair with a filmmaker. When word of the affair was leaked, Edwards got on every media outlet he could and denied, denied and denied some more. When rumors started spreading about him fathering a child with his mistress, Edwards donned the cloak of Righteous Indignation and proclaimed far and wide across the land that the story was utterly and completely free of merit. Today, he backtracked on all that and admitted yes indeed, everything was true. Apparently the upcoming tell-all book by a former campaign aide which will assert that Edwards offered to pay hush money for the rest of his life if he assumed paternity of the child in question (which he did) prompted Edwards to 'fess up to his tacky indiscretion.
I think the part that bothers people, including me, the most is the ease and facility with which Edwards deliberately and with all premeditation lied to the entire country repeatedly by denying something he knew full well had happened. This is why people have no respect for politicians nowadays, because they prove themselves to be compulsive, adroit and inveterate liars over and over again, until they are backed up against the wall and have no choice but to admit their sins. How extremely sad we have people of such dismally low morals in high public places.
And the rain keeps falling outside on the dry dusty desert, from a featureless gray sky, trying but not quite able to wash away our sins.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The Cockroaches Are Out
They say whenever there is a disaster - floods, fires, weather events - that cause destruction on any scale, large or small, loathsome vermin like cockroaches come running out of their hiding places. They come out either to save their own miserable hides or to feast and profit on the misfortune of others. That's what cockroaches do - they lead their lives in the dirt and the filth and the darkness and rejoice when a catastrophe opens an opportunity for them.
We see this happening in lurid, depressing clarity in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake this past Tuesday. A major disaster in every possible aspect, the suffering and misery is truly epic in scale and can only get worse from this point forward. As with other recent disasters, such as the Indonesian tsunami several years ago or the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, the news outlets are overflowing with searing scenes of unimaginable horror, of countless bodies lying in the streets, and of the gravely injured, alone and unattended, waiting for medical assistance that most likely will not arrive in time. The outpouring of sympathy and aid from all corners of the world, from places as diverse as China and Iceland, is also monumental. But still, there are people in this world for whom this cataclysm is merely another chance for publicity and to advance their own agendas.
I am referring specifically to right-wing flab repository Rush Limbaugh and drooling, dementia-addled "man of God" Pat Robertson. Blowhard Limbaugh, the Fort Knox of Ignorance and Stupidity, used his radio program to twist the Haitian crisis into a harangue against the Obama administration for responding too promptly to the event (what a horrible thing to do!). There was also some idiocy which I don't understand involving our income tax being equivalent to foreign aid to Haiti. Excuse me? And to top it off some other blather which implied that the Haitian disaster was an almost tailor-made event for the Obama administration to somehow advance its own agenda. If all this sounds confusing and makes no sense, it's because everything Limbaugh has said regarding this event has been confusing and makes no sense. Just when you think he can't possibly say anything more ignorant and brainless than he already has, he goes and tops himself.
And then there's the desiccated, putty-faced, Howdy-Doody-with-Alzheimers dimwit Pat Robertson, who has come up with some kind of astonishing, mind-blowing drivel about the Haitians forming a pact with the Devil a long time ago to get them out from under French domination. He said directly that all the tribulations and difficulties that benighted nation - the poorest nation in the entire western hemisphere - is due to them agreeing to serve the Devil many years ago. Robertson and his ilk also look down on the Haitian people as being devil-worshipers and voodoo practitioners - which most Haitians are not - although this pseudo-Christian nonsense about a pact with the Devil sounds as much like ignorant, superstitious babbling as does sticking pins in dolls. This latest torrent of insensitive, grossly idiotic hatespeech should prove once and for all that Pat Robertson's brain has completely rotted out, and he needs to be put out of everyone's misery and given a needle to the vein.
They say that horrendous events bring out the best in people, that in every catastrophe which involves massive destruction and loss of life, there are a myriad of unknown, often anonymous acts of courage, selflessness and heroism. Unfortunately in our binary universe, the opposite is also true; disasters bring out the cowardice, hatefulness, evilness and stupidity of people. Anyone who has a shred of intelligence, or compassion for the suffering of innocent people will recognize immediately that Limbaugh and Robertson are shameless examples of the latter, and deserve to be denounced and condemned without mercy, in the strongest possible terms.
We see this happening in lurid, depressing clarity in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake this past Tuesday. A major disaster in every possible aspect, the suffering and misery is truly epic in scale and can only get worse from this point forward. As with other recent disasters, such as the Indonesian tsunami several years ago or the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, the news outlets are overflowing with searing scenes of unimaginable horror, of countless bodies lying in the streets, and of the gravely injured, alone and unattended, waiting for medical assistance that most likely will not arrive in time. The outpouring of sympathy and aid from all corners of the world, from places as diverse as China and Iceland, is also monumental. But still, there are people in this world for whom this cataclysm is merely another chance for publicity and to advance their own agendas.
I am referring specifically to right-wing flab repository Rush Limbaugh and drooling, dementia-addled "man of God" Pat Robertson. Blowhard Limbaugh, the Fort Knox of Ignorance and Stupidity, used his radio program to twist the Haitian crisis into a harangue against the Obama administration for responding too promptly to the event (what a horrible thing to do!). There was also some idiocy which I don't understand involving our income tax being equivalent to foreign aid to Haiti. Excuse me? And to top it off some other blather which implied that the Haitian disaster was an almost tailor-made event for the Obama administration to somehow advance its own agenda. If all this sounds confusing and makes no sense, it's because everything Limbaugh has said regarding this event has been confusing and makes no sense. Just when you think he can't possibly say anything more ignorant and brainless than he already has, he goes and tops himself.
And then there's the desiccated, putty-faced, Howdy-Doody-with-Alzheimers dimwit Pat Robertson, who has come up with some kind of astonishing, mind-blowing drivel about the Haitians forming a pact with the Devil a long time ago to get them out from under French domination. He said directly that all the tribulations and difficulties that benighted nation - the poorest nation in the entire western hemisphere - is due to them agreeing to serve the Devil many years ago. Robertson and his ilk also look down on the Haitian people as being devil-worshipers and voodoo practitioners - which most Haitians are not - although this pseudo-Christian nonsense about a pact with the Devil sounds as much like ignorant, superstitious babbling as does sticking pins in dolls. This latest torrent of insensitive, grossly idiotic hatespeech should prove once and for all that Pat Robertson's brain has completely rotted out, and he needs to be put out of everyone's misery and given a needle to the vein.
They say that horrendous events bring out the best in people, that in every catastrophe which involves massive destruction and loss of life, there are a myriad of unknown, often anonymous acts of courage, selflessness and heroism. Unfortunately in our binary universe, the opposite is also true; disasters bring out the cowardice, hatefulness, evilness and stupidity of people. Anyone who has a shred of intelligence, or compassion for the suffering of innocent people will recognize immediately that Limbaugh and Robertson are shameless examples of the latter, and deserve to be denounced and condemned without mercy, in the strongest possible terms.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
La La La La La La, You Say It's My Birthday
You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too--yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you.
-- "Birthday" by the Beatles, from the White Album
The Beatles' song "Birthday" has been echoing in my head all morning, and how appropriate. Because today really is my birthday, number 58 and still counting.
How I ever got to be 58 years old is beyond me, given everything that I've done in the past half-century. For some reason "half-century" sounds like a longer time than "58 years," but whatever. When you're in your twenties, being in your fifties is incomprehensible, so far off in the future. Everyone you knew who were in their fifties seemed older than God's underwear, and it was almost like they were from some other planet. Now, being fifty-plus years old doesn't seem that awful at all.
I look back at my life and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out. I've been extremely fortunate in that I've been able to live my life exactly as I wanted to live it, as opposed to conforming to someone else's idea of what my life should have been like. And like most people I was subjected to a lot of pressure in my early years to conform to a certain societal role. I have been blessed with extremely good health and the skills and talent to make a very comfortable living for myself. I have had the opportunity to live and work in some of the most interesting places in the country, most notably Washington DC in the eighties and the San Francisco Bay Area in the early nineties. I have also been able to visit some of the most fascinating and wonderful places in the world, such as Rio de Janeiro, the United Kingdom, Australia, Iceland, and the Netherlands. There are still many other places I want to visit, but these places are dreams fulfilled for me and they have left their indelible marks on me.
Here are some of my impressions and memories of the decades I have managed to live through, either through sheer luck or by the grace of the Big Dude in the Sky:
The Fifties were all about growing up in a small town, with picture-perfect white Christmases, beautiful Pennsylvania autumns, warm, seemingly-endless summer nights, starting grade school and beginning to explore a huge, wonderful world.
The Sixties were a coming-of-age time, when my life expanded beyond my family and I started to get some idea of my place in the world. I remember the Sixties primarily through music, with the Beatles and Motown in the first half, and the psychedelic music of the hippie era in the second half. The late Sixties were an incredible blast of color, light and excitement, a joyous liberation from the stifling conformity of the previous decade. It was a time when everything was new and exciting and colorful, a time when the world fairly exploded with new possibilities and ideas everywhere, in music, art, literature, entertainment, society. Everything was changing and everything was possible, and it is still probably the most exciting and wonderful time of my life.
The Seventies were a time when reality set in and I had to come to terms with the real world. Like a massive hangover after the wild party that the Sixties were, the Seventies were a time for me to get a grip and get serious about my life and my career. College turned out disastrously for me, and unlike those very fortunate people who have a crystal-clear idea of what they want to do with their lives, I had to flounder around for a while exploring a lot of different things. I did have some very interesting jobs that taught me a lot about the world and about myself, most notably working in the Social Services counseling area of the Allegheny County jail in Pittsburgh. That was probably the most berserk, interesting, frightening and enjoyable job I have ever had in my life. Much of that had to do with my boss at the time, who was one of the funniest people I have ever met. He had an incredible talent for mimicking people, and did uncannily perfect, spot-on impressions of the people we had to deal with in the jail. I remember many afternoons when we laughed ourselves silly for hours. I would laugh so hard and so long my entire body hurt. It was the most ridiculously insane job ever, but also the most fun. The Seventies were like that, completely crazy-scary and interesting all at once.
The Eighties were a huge amount of fun. I was living in Washington DC for the decade, probably the epicenter of everything that was happening in the world at the time. My career was really taking off at the time, being hired by IBM in 1981. I found a lot of wonderful friends who became my chosen family, and we spent the decade in a dizzying haze of dance, dance, dance, drugs, drugs, drugs. DC had its own special kind of R&B/dance music (now known as "old skool") that was exciting, melodic and extremely danceable. We wouldn't get to the dance clubs until 1 A.M. and stayed until well past dawn, stumbling out of the club dripping with sweat into the blindingly brilliant Sunday morning sunlight. And we did that nearly every single weekend! We would travel all over seeking the ultimate in entertainment, and regularly went to New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other places on the party circuit. Now, even thinking about something like that gets me tired. Given the tremendous tsunami of recreational pharmaceuticals with which we were inundated, I truly don't understand how I survived that decade.
The Nineties were the time when I finally grew up and became an adult. Literally, I had been living a very extended adolescence up to that time. You can't do that forever because even the biggest party has to end at some point, and for me that was the nineties. I had a major farewell when I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1990, and it was five days of the most insane, non-stop partying I had ever done. After that, everything changed. I passed some sort of milestone or had some kind of epiphany, because I left all that craziness behind and somehow, became an adult. My career took me to California in the early nineties and while it didn't turn out to be the utopia I always imagined it to be, I still loved it out there and miss living in California. It was close to being a paradise, but even paradise doesn't last forever. I moved to Phoenix in 1993 and have been here ever since, having finally found a place I can call home. The last half of the Nineties were a time of settling down and stability, and building the basis for the rest of my life.
The Double-Aughts (a really awful name for the first decade of the new millennium) have been a time of transition for me, of really understanding what my life is about and what is important to me. I came to realize that my true calling in life is to work with animals and I came to realize that rabbits are the animals I want to help the most. I discovered Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue and the wonderful people there have become my family, the people that I choose to share my life with, and they bring meaning, structure, purpose and best of all joy to my life. As I moved out of the working world into retirement, I've learned to be open and flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing times. Politically and culturally, it has been a scary, violent and at times horrifying ride, fraught with really ignorant and insane people who wear their racism and intolerance like a badge of honor. The past couple of years have been the Ascendancy of Stupidity in America, but I've managed to get through it and I have cautious hope and optimism that this new decade will bring more of the peace, prosperity and happiness I have been so very lucky to have at every point in my life.
It's my birthday too--yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you.
-- "Birthday" by the Beatles, from the White Album
The Beatles' song "Birthday" has been echoing in my head all morning, and how appropriate. Because today really is my birthday, number 58 and still counting.
How I ever got to be 58 years old is beyond me, given everything that I've done in the past half-century. For some reason "half-century" sounds like a longer time than "58 years," but whatever. When you're in your twenties, being in your fifties is incomprehensible, so far off in the future. Everyone you knew who were in their fifties seemed older than God's underwear, and it was almost like they were from some other planet. Now, being fifty-plus years old doesn't seem that awful at all.
I look back at my life and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out. I've been extremely fortunate in that I've been able to live my life exactly as I wanted to live it, as opposed to conforming to someone else's idea of what my life should have been like. And like most people I was subjected to a lot of pressure in my early years to conform to a certain societal role. I have been blessed with extremely good health and the skills and talent to make a very comfortable living for myself. I have had the opportunity to live and work in some of the most interesting places in the country, most notably Washington DC in the eighties and the San Francisco Bay Area in the early nineties. I have also been able to visit some of the most fascinating and wonderful places in the world, such as Rio de Janeiro, the United Kingdom, Australia, Iceland, and the Netherlands. There are still many other places I want to visit, but these places are dreams fulfilled for me and they have left their indelible marks on me.
Here are some of my impressions and memories of the decades I have managed to live through, either through sheer luck or by the grace of the Big Dude in the Sky:
The Fifties were all about growing up in a small town, with picture-perfect white Christmases, beautiful Pennsylvania autumns, warm, seemingly-endless summer nights, starting grade school and beginning to explore a huge, wonderful world.
The Sixties were a coming-of-age time, when my life expanded beyond my family and I started to get some idea of my place in the world. I remember the Sixties primarily through music, with the Beatles and Motown in the first half, and the psychedelic music of the hippie era in the second half. The late Sixties were an incredible blast of color, light and excitement, a joyous liberation from the stifling conformity of the previous decade. It was a time when everything was new and exciting and colorful, a time when the world fairly exploded with new possibilities and ideas everywhere, in music, art, literature, entertainment, society. Everything was changing and everything was possible, and it is still probably the most exciting and wonderful time of my life.
The Seventies were a time when reality set in and I had to come to terms with the real world. Like a massive hangover after the wild party that the Sixties were, the Seventies were a time for me to get a grip and get serious about my life and my career. College turned out disastrously for me, and unlike those very fortunate people who have a crystal-clear idea of what they want to do with their lives, I had to flounder around for a while exploring a lot of different things. I did have some very interesting jobs that taught me a lot about the world and about myself, most notably working in the Social Services counseling area of the Allegheny County jail in Pittsburgh. That was probably the most berserk, interesting, frightening and enjoyable job I have ever had in my life. Much of that had to do with my boss at the time, who was one of the funniest people I have ever met. He had an incredible talent for mimicking people, and did uncannily perfect, spot-on impressions of the people we had to deal with in the jail. I remember many afternoons when we laughed ourselves silly for hours. I would laugh so hard and so long my entire body hurt. It was the most ridiculously insane job ever, but also the most fun. The Seventies were like that, completely crazy-scary and interesting all at once.
The Eighties were a huge amount of fun. I was living in Washington DC for the decade, probably the epicenter of everything that was happening in the world at the time. My career was really taking off at the time, being hired by IBM in 1981. I found a lot of wonderful friends who became my chosen family, and we spent the decade in a dizzying haze of dance, dance, dance, drugs, drugs, drugs. DC had its own special kind of R&B/dance music (now known as "old skool") that was exciting, melodic and extremely danceable. We wouldn't get to the dance clubs until 1 A.M. and stayed until well past dawn, stumbling out of the club dripping with sweat into the blindingly brilliant Sunday morning sunlight. And we did that nearly every single weekend! We would travel all over seeking the ultimate in entertainment, and regularly went to New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other places on the party circuit. Now, even thinking about something like that gets me tired. Given the tremendous tsunami of recreational pharmaceuticals with which we were inundated, I truly don't understand how I survived that decade.
The Nineties were the time when I finally grew up and became an adult. Literally, I had been living a very extended adolescence up to that time. You can't do that forever because even the biggest party has to end at some point, and for me that was the nineties. I had a major farewell when I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1990, and it was five days of the most insane, non-stop partying I had ever done. After that, everything changed. I passed some sort of milestone or had some kind of epiphany, because I left all that craziness behind and somehow, became an adult. My career took me to California in the early nineties and while it didn't turn out to be the utopia I always imagined it to be, I still loved it out there and miss living in California. It was close to being a paradise, but even paradise doesn't last forever. I moved to Phoenix in 1993 and have been here ever since, having finally found a place I can call home. The last half of the Nineties were a time of settling down and stability, and building the basis for the rest of my life.
The Double-Aughts (a really awful name for the first decade of the new millennium) have been a time of transition for me, of really understanding what my life is about and what is important to me. I came to realize that my true calling in life is to work with animals and I came to realize that rabbits are the animals I want to help the most. I discovered Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue and the wonderful people there have become my family, the people that I choose to share my life with, and they bring meaning, structure, purpose and best of all joy to my life. As I moved out of the working world into retirement, I've learned to be open and flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing times. Politically and culturally, it has been a scary, violent and at times horrifying ride, fraught with really ignorant and insane people who wear their racism and intolerance like a badge of honor. The past couple of years have been the Ascendancy of Stupidity in America, but I've managed to get through it and I have cautious hope and optimism that this new decade will bring more of the peace, prosperity and happiness I have been so very lucky to have at every point in my life.
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