Pleasantly Out Of the Loop

No place like the south at night. On my own front porch I can smell during any given evening- spicebush...an aroma like toasted coconut which has intertwined with the honeysuckle that winds up over the wooden pillars. Humidity, too, and this brings out the sweet smell of Mimosa trees. Add my neighbour Robert's steaks hissing hickory sparks on the grill across the street and it's heaven. I wish we could bottle the stuff and peddle it to disgruntled, hollow -souled terrorists.

Shoot. You just can't stay mean when the very air smells like summer and forgiveness and home. You sit in the porch swing - your heart turning over with the sheer prettiness of a red sunset...God has pulled up along side you one more time and cut the engine. You wait for him to speak.

Boats and cheap cookies

I started out in Texas over 52 years ago, but somehow ended up in a mountain community known as Eureka Springs with a group of my 40 closest pals. Far too dependent on actual money needed to pay rent and buy frivolous items like gas, milk and bread, we could hardly be called a commune. We just weren't that hip. We were browsing, trying on 'hip' for size - looking for that perfect amount which would insure our cutting- edge posture in that tiny art community, but still allow us to drop in at the local Burger King without censure. During that time, I hand- lettered frilly victorian signs, waited tables, washed dishes and herded tourists through caves -all in the most polite possible fashion. After all - I was raised in Texas, where deference to one's elders was everything.

My friends and I weren't hard core about anything in those days, and in some ways that probably saved us from being insufferable. The real ' back to the land' crowd sort of turned their thin, pinched noses up at us. We still ate processed foods and smoked commercial cigarettes; this proved our unworthiness to sit in front of their late night campfires and get high.

We were, however, enthusiastic campers, hikers and canoe devotees in our own right. Weekends we paddled downstream in our home made tie dyed shirts, wolfing cookies and singing...the sound of which floated up and over the high banks of the Kings, to the astonishment of whatever cows were grazing near the river.
When we got tired of eating cheap cookies, we invented a game. If you could hit the next canoe with a Chips Ahoy -10 points. If you could actually wing somebody in the next canoe [ in swift water this was a fast moving target, remember] you got 25 points. Even more points for the one who could take a big cookie crumb and hit the mark, due to the decreased size of the missile. And of course, if you could make the intended target yell "OWW" this was good for bonus points.

But that was a lifetime ago.

I guess I'm still a paradox of myself - still not hard core enough one way or the other, according to who you ask. Now that I'm middle aged, I still love windchimes and the rich smell of linseed oil that creeps into the crannies of this house when a new painting sits curing in some corner. But I also keep my checkbook balanced and have at least a notion of which new bill is being discussed on the senate floor.
I credit my late husband with many things -the most important of which was providing me with a gentle, day by day education in seeing the Big Picture.
A fellow Texan, a chemistry/ math major plus a doctorate in art history, he'd come home from Viet Nam half blinded. After a horrendous recovery stint at Walter Reed, he spent the remaining months of his tour as a staffer at the Pentagon, interpreting daily field reports. Later the next year he entered painting conservation training at the Smithsonian, and finally ended up as a conservator at the National Portrait Gallery. By the time we met in 1979, he had opened up a clinic for refugees on the Nicaraguan border.
Bill was the first person I ever knew who was a bigger than life sort of man. A military spy, sculptor, scientist and missionary, I felt a little overwhelmed by his accomplishments at first, then later learned to embrace them. After all, they were at the core of who he was and who he would unwittingly teach me to be in the future. Without knowing it, he taught me that the strongest life force can be found in the small things one loves and involves themselves in every day. That the more people really know, the less consumed they are with setting other people straight. That it's really okay to be nobody in particular, even in your own head. Maybe even providing one with a certain edge, when things get down to the wire. There's no ego pruning to do, no mental underbrush to clear away when things get tough.

I stand back and look at myself every few years, though and feel amazed- a bit embarrassed, even. I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, and finally have the sense to prepare for how different I'll be in five years. Different, but more the same than ever -just more rounded out in my ability to see the big picture- like swapping a macro-lens for a fish eye. My perception of things may be a bit too round, but at least all the details are there, ready for interpretation.

I learned so much from him, things I never knew I would need 'til now. These are uncertain times, and some days I feel I'm paddling alone. The wind is rising and as usual, an empty cookie bag is blowing around in the bottom of the boat .

Carpal Tunnel Cassarole

...is what one gets from constantly stirring huge pots of steaming this or that. I've been cooking for ten this week, due to my significant other and his family. M's mother is in the hospital and not doing well at all, I 'm afraid.
Seared pot roast with gravy and little pearl onions. Enchiladas with white basil sauce. Tonight it'll be chicken and rice, some parker house rolls and frozen green peas, probably.
I keep thinking that folks from southern California would prefer something a little jazzier...but I was wrong. Possibly at a time like this they need comfort food instead of Cobb salad and sushi.
So.
Those of us who can't change many of the hurtful things in this world tend to just...cook.

Well. Okay then...

...I've waited for several days to hear the whole truth from Sarah Palin. Instead I'm hearing ambiguous -sounding...well, almost platitudes, I guess you'd say. Just embroidering on whatever it was she never really came out and said in the first place. No announcement of grave illness, no ultimatum from a heart-scalded husband, concerned about the family. Just vague rhetoric about how she can make a difference in a better way, away from the governor's mansion.

I still like Sarah very much. I believe in largely the same things she does. I LOVE the fact that's she's not polished. I embrace the idea that she's 'average' - so to speak. But we are, as a nation headed into uncharted waters on so many fronts. Sure, we've been through endless wars and conflicts, depressions and scandals. But this time, our solvency can't be recovered in a year or four, by building tanks and warships. Our debt is so large as to be unpayable. Individual states teeter on the edge of bankruptcy every day. In the coming year or so, many experts predict inflation on goods and services the like of which we've never imagined. We won't even talk about the extreme taxes The Annointed One intends for us, across the board, in every tax bracket.
We don't - as a nation - know how to grow our own gardens and be satisfied wearing our clothes until they actually wear out, the way our folks did.
Now let's add the tiara.
There are people in Washington who are so corrupt, so hollow on the inside that they want to keep us as slaves. They mean to rule every aspect of our lives, if they can figure out how to get away with it. They want to dictate what kind of light bulbs we use, what politcal orientation our children have, what sort of car we drive. Other nations are quietly laughing at us for hurrying toward the very system of government they finally have escaped from. These next two elections -2010 and 2012 are perhaps just as important as any we've ever had. We simply must have somebody who will count the cost beforehand, understand the gravity of the office they pursue and their role in preserving the nation. Somebody in for the long haul, regardless of how messy and unscrupulous the opposition is - because what happens in next few years is so very, very important.

There's just no crying in baseball.

Sarah leaves the building...

...probably for several reasons, I'm thinking. I only grit my teeth over the possibilities. I hope it's for the upright reasons I think and not the single one I dread.

I've watched Letterman from his early days as an early morning talk show host in the '80s up to the dubious present. He was - back then - one of the funniest human beings ever to wear socks. His take on things was fresh original and off the wall. He didn't depend on making lewd sexual jokes about children for a laugh. His humour wasn't personal, but universal. Now he keeps a staff of elding, hardened creatures like himself to write monologues. At least one of those guys has a teenage daughter. These folks probably have their favourite cut- throat lawyer on speed dial, and how many seconds it would take them to bring charges on behalf of themselves in the same situation is anybody's guess. Easy to see why Jay Leno's ratings are generally better. Somehow, Leno has retained much of his early sense of decency, even in the hard driven world of corporate television.

Sarah Palin reacted in much the same way as any parent would, all politics aside. I honestly question the integrity of anybody who thinks it was fair game to say what Letterman did. Though no fan of the Obama administration, I would be sickened to hear about his two daughters verbally abused by some dried out old comic. That's not politics -that's just being human.
But I digress.

Palin had to have known how murky the political waters can get, and chose to drag her family into it. Apparently Todd Palin consented. The ensuing price was any sense of normalcy and her family's privacy. She's a bright enough woman to really understand this, and it surprises me that she'd buckle in mid stream, no matter how vile the opposition. I don't blame her -at least from the viewpoint of trying to salvage her family's remaining peace of mind. We don't know the whole story yet. Regardless -barring illness or some other bigger than life reason for quitting- she opted to play the big leagues and as Tom Hanks once so fetchingly shrieked "What...wait - are you crying?...there's no crying in baseball!"

This had better be good...

Naturally there's been a lot of speculation over Sarah Palin's announcement... not all of it good spirited. My own take -for what it's worth -runs something like this.
There should only be two reasons why Palin would step down. The first one is a grave health concern, either involving herself or the immediate family. The second might involve all the ruthless, below the belt comedy created at the expense of Palin and her family. Even months after the election, she's still a major target for stand up hacks long after McCain and Biden have been shuffled to the bottom of the deck, comedy-wise-though I think Biden is deliciously funny.
And of course, nobody except the annoying, amazing Helen Thomas would take on the Anointed One in public, without fear of maybe being audited, or something.
It could be that Todd Palin has finally had enough of media and the vicious left wing fringes and actually gave her an ultimatum- me or the Governor's mansion.
The only thing I DO know is this: if said resignation turned out to be a time to 'cram' for 2012 - a three year hiatus in order to gain the White House -she would have to do it without my vote. Even if she polishes her verbal delivery, can list and discuss every dictator, every state deficit from here to sunrise -it won't be enough. You don't toss people of Alaska's trust as though it were a discarded melon rind. She should stay the course and look her detractors in the eye -if indeed that should be the reason.