I am not the problem, boys....

you are, George and Donnie.

The mayor of Salt Lake City made the following comments as the President and Secretary of State traveled there as a stop on the administration's campaign to belittle and besmirch those that think that they are a bunch of fools and worse.

The mayor's comments
Address by
Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson

Washington Square
Salt Lake City, Utah
August 30, 2006

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.

Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We support our nation's troops. We are grateful to our veterans who have sacrificed so much for our freedoms. We love our country, we hold dear the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this disastrous president, his administration, and the complacent, complicit Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great president and a Republican, who said:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

We are here today as truth-tellers.

And we are here to demand: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred responsibility to ascertain and report the truth - rather than acting like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda of a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters of life and death . . . on matters upon which our nation's reputation hinges . . . on matters that directly relate to our nation's fundamental values . . . and on matters relating to the survival of our planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in an unnecessary war, based upon false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain damaged, or rendered mentally ill. Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than before our invasion of Iraq. And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take many years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by our invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

What incredible ineptitude and callousness for our President to talk about a Crusade while lying to us to make a case for the invasion and occupation of a Muslim country!

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, the violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of the Bush administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly abrogated its responsibility and authority under our checks-and-balances system of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war. No more inhumanity."

Let's raise our voices, and demand, "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let's consider some of the most monstrous lies - lies that have led us, like a nation of sheep, to this tragic war.

Following September 11, 2001, the world knew that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for the horrific attacks on our country. Our long-time allies were sympathetic and supportive. But our president transformed that support into international disdain for the United States, choosing to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, rather than focus on and capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Why invade and occupy Iraq? Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice represented to us, without qualification, that there were strong ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In September, 2002, President Bush made the incredible claim that "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."

President Bush represented to Congress, without any factual basis whatsoever, that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks.

Our President and Vice-President, along with an unquestioning news media, repeatedly led our nation to believe that there was a working relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, a relationship that threatened the US.

Even last week, when I met with Thomas Bock, National Commander of the American Legion, I asked him why we are engaged in the war in Iraq. He said, "Why, of course, because of the 9/11 attacks on our country." I asked, "What did Iraq have to do with those attacks?" He looked puzzled, then said, "Well, the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq."

I was shocked. Here is a man who has criticized us for opposing the war in Iraq - and he is completely wrong about the underlying facts used to justify this war.

Not only has there never been any evidence of any involvement by Saddam Hussein or Iraq with the attacks on 9/11, but there has never been any evidence of any operational connection whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Colin Powell finally conceded there is no "concrete evidence about the connection." "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track al Qaeda" disclosed that "his team had found no evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein." And the top investigator for our European allies has said, `If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.'"

President Bush himself finally admitted nine days ago during a press conference that there was no connection between the attacks on 9/11 and Iraq. It's terrific that the President has now admitted what others have known for so long - but where is the accountability for the tragic war we were led into on the basis of his earlier misrepresentations?

Besides the fictions of Saddam Hussein somehow being linked to the 9/11 attacks and his supposed connection with al Qaeda, what was the principal justification for forgoing additional weapons inspections, failing to work with our allies toward a solution, refraining from seeking additional resolutions from the United Nations, and hurrying to war - a so-called "pre-emptive" war - in which we would attack and occupy a Muslim nation that posed no security risk to the United States, and cause the deaths of many thousands of innocent men, women, and children - and the deaths and lifetime injuries to many thousands of our own servicemen and servicewomen?

The principal claim was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - biological and chemical weapons - and was seeking to build up a nuclear weapons capability. As we now know, there was nothing - no evidence whatsoever - to support those claims.

President Bush represented to us - and to people around the world - that one of the reasons we needed to make war in Iraq - and to do it right away - was because Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons. His assertions about Saddam Hussein trying to purchase nuclear materials from an African nation and about Iraq seeking to obtain aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium were challenged at the time by our own intelligence agency and scientists, yet he didn't tell us that!

Ten days before the invasion of Iraq, it was proven that the documents upon which President Bush's claim about Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium was based were forgeries. However, President Bush did not disclose that to the American people. By that failure, he betrayed each of us, he betrayed our country, and he betrayed the cause of world peace.

Neither did the vast majority of the news media disclose the forgeries - until it was far too late. It took our local newspapers here in Salt Lake City four months - until after President Bush declared that major combat in Iraq was over - to report the discovery that the documents were forgeries - and, therefore, that there was no basis for the false claims about Saddam Hussein trying to build up a nuclear capability. By its failure to promptly disclose the forgeries, the news media betrayed us as well.

Had the American people known we were being lied to - had President Bush informed us that the documents were forged and that he had no other basis for his claim - had our nation's media done its job, rather than slavishly repeating to us the lies being fed to it by the Bush administration - our nation may well not have allowed the commencement of this outrageous, illegal, unjustified war.

To President Bush, to his administration, to our go-along Congress, and to our news media, we are here today, demanding, "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Undisclosed by President Bush or Condoleezza Rice was the fact that top nuclear scientists had informed the Administration that the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be useful in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes. Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed.

So much for the phony claims of Saddam Hussein building nuclear weapons - the primary claims justifying the rush to war.

What were we told about chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction? These claims were as baseless and fraudulent as the claims about nuclear weapons.

President Bush told us in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. Then, in May of 2003, he made the outlandish statement that, "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us, "We know where the [WMDs] are." Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Powell also joined in the chorus of lies and misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons were found. Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay noted that Iraq did not have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991--a conclusion remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice before the 9/11 attacks - and before they sacrificed the truth in the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell said that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell.

And in July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush administration with such impunity is frightening - chilling. Yet these imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should just fall in line with them and continue to take them at their word.

The truth has been established. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie, our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation led to a tragic, illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here because of our values. We love our country. We cherish the freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who speak out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American or appeasers of fascists. We have good, wholesome family values. In our families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth standing up and fighting for. Our family values promote respect and equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation. In our families, we teach the value of hard work and competence - and we are left to wonder about a President who, after receiving an intelligence memo about the threat posed by al Qaeda, decides to continue his month-long vacation - just before the 9/11 attacks on our country.

As we demand the truth from others, let us also face the truth. Our government all too often has not cared about the human rights of people in other nations - and it doesn't really care about democracy, unless it leads to the election of those who will do our bidding.

Consider the irony regarding the claims that Saddam had chemical weapons and, because of that, we needed to rush to war in Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons - first against Iranians, then against his own people, the Kurds - our country provided him with biological and chemical agents and equipment to make the weapons. Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush refused even to support economic sanctions against Hussein for his use of weapons of mass destruction. What did our nation do in response to Hussein's use of chemical weapons, killing tens of thousand of people, when he actually had them? We befriended, coddled, and rewarded him - with government-guaranteed loans totaling $5 billion since 1983, freeing up currency for Hussein to modernize his military assets.

Perhaps those in the US government who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein to further US business interests, while he was gassing the Kurds, should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is being tried now for crimes against humanity.

No more lies, no more hiding of the truth, no more wars that more than triple the value of stock in Dick Cheney's prior employer, Halliburton - and which, as of last September, has increased the value of the Halliburton CEO's stock by $78 million.

We are patriots. We're deeply concerned. And we demand change, now.

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President Bush were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being flown into buildings by terrorists.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons in nations where we can expect they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that would, for the first time, limit fundamental rights and liberties for entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous coal-burning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres of wild lands.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and inconsistent immigration laws and policies.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Act.

No more killing.

No more pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between Dick Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those who are economically-disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs.

No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

No more silence by the American people.

This is a new day. We will not be silent. We will continue to raise our voices. We will bring others with us. We will grow and grow, regardless of political party - unified in our insistence upon the truth, upon peace-making, upon more humane treatment of our brothers and sisters around the world.

We will be ever cognizant of our moral responsibility to speak up in the face of wrongdoing, and to work as we can for a better, safer, more just community, nation, and world.

So we won't let down. We won't be quiet. We will continue to resist the lies, the deception, the outrages of the Bush administration. We will insist that peace be pursued, and that, as a nation, we help those in need. We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of exploitation. We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush administration has pursued war. It's up to all of us to do our part.

Thank you everyone for lending your voices to this call for compassion, for peace, for greater humanity. Let us keep in mind the injunction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

---

My comments:

I am not a fascist. I am not a fool. And anyone that wants to tell me I am not patriotic or entitled express my disgust at the dismantling of the United States of most of the past 220 years, before these clowns tried to parlay the deaths of my neighbors in an act of extremists into a means to control the population with fear and enrich the pockets of their corporate donor, is more than welcome to say it to my face so I can have the personal privilege of kicking their ignorant, lying ass.

Keith Obermann had it exactly right in his commentary on the lies that try to turn those of us that question the government into some sort of anti-American scum. I only hope that as many of us as are now being labeled that way make a special effort this year to send a message to take back our country from these real anti-Americans/

Before and After

Just to give you an idea of how bad these magazines really are after forty and fifty years in the workshop at my mother's old house - take a look at the covers above. Even the original scan does not do full justice to the waterstains and wavey remains of these magazines. I have to use both hands to press them against the glass to get them flat enough to be useful. An attempt to scan the Corvair article inside was an exercise in frustration. Short of taking out the pages, there is no way to scan them and get them to lay flat. And the way they smell.....the basement was wet. Not damp. Frequently, there were inches of water on the floor because my mother, as years went by, did not bother using a sump pump because of the sheer amount of junk that filled every inch of floor in usually soaking wet cardboard boxes. Let me delicately say that after weeks of cleaning things out, the contents that were left filled an entire garbage truck - not a container, but an entire truck with compactor. And there was another container worth of trash that didn't fit in the truck.

These old magazines were saved the last night I visited the house to patrol the remains for anything I might have missed from my father's workshop, untouched since the early 1980's when my parents divorced. They were propped up in wooden crates my father had made to fit them - and, unfortunately, most of them were too damaged to salvage - on shelves he had made to store his books. I plan on slowly scanning the covers, and whatever interests me from the inside, and then deciding what to do with them, since they stink, are brittle andd falling apart, and really aren't of interest to my family or my kids. So, meanwhile, I'm keeping myself occupied and remembering the cars of my childhood.

(And just in case you missed the apparent theme of "cars with bad brakes" in the past two posts, it was not intentional. And the brakes on the Mercedes did get fixed. At some point, my father horsetraded "The Garbage Truck" for a '66 Corvair Monza that he had for a long time - for him, anyway - until someone made him an offer for it and he transformed it into a big green Plymouth Fury III. That's another story.)

Buy a Mercedes and build your own Portable Pump?

From the August 1959 issue of Science and Mechanics.

My parents bought a used 1957 Mercedes back around 1964. Painted the same shade as municipal trucks in town, we kids immediately dubbed it "The Garbage Truck", and the name stuck. The car was cheap because it had a bad handbrake, and the previous owner had parked it uphill from a chainlink fence. By the time my parents owned it, the bumper had been bumped, and the infamous Mercedes grill had a nice fence-post-sized hole. But it was a cool car, with folding down rear seats and seat belts at a time no American car had either.

We used to lock my brother in the truck by folding up the rear seat. My mother got used to calling him to dinner from the faint screams of "Mommy?" from the trunk. And my sister and I got a good whopping with the wooden spoon, even as we secretly laughed at what we had done to the annoying little brother.

It's a wonder he speaks to either of us!

The New Edsel

From the cover of the October 1957 issue of Science and Mechanics. Be glad that you can't smell the original after forty years of being in the basement of my parent's old house. They stink.

When I was a kid, the neighbor up the street had a pink and beige '57 Edsel. At least he did until the brakes started to give out and he couldn't park it on the street anymore for fear that it would roll down the steep hill and end up straddling a lane or two of Route 17 at the bottom. It was a big, unimpressive car, except for the color which was of the sort of shades that made the cars of the 1960's look serene by comparison. For all the nostalgia about chrome and tail fins at car shows, I doubt any car maker will ever again offer the sort of demented combinations of flat pepto and canned mushroom soup of the Edsel. Or the buttons on the steering wheel as shown in the scan. Please note the test driver is doing a hearty 55 or so, a speed at which a real Edsel would be vibrating like a harp...

The 2996 Project

I am honored to be a particpant in the
2996 Project, where bloggers from all over the US and world will each be honoring a victim of the 9/11 attacks. The link to the project's home page is also in my sidebar.

"Honey, take the phone - you have a call"

Almost forgot. I walked in the house Monday after picking my husband from the train station and the phone rang while I was still in the doorway. Expecting it to be one of the kid's friends, I thought he was teasing when he handed me the phone and told me I had a call.

"Who is this?", I asked.

"Oh, hi, Evelyn, this is {female former boss)" Just like that and without letting me get in a word, "So sorry we had to let you go."

"Uh, Ok, is there something you need from me?" I mumbled as my life flashed before me - I was stunned that my husband hadn't had the good sense to say I wasn't THERE.

"Well, you remember those tools you asked me to order? Do you still want them?" My husband had found some little handtools being sold on Ebay, and we had asked her if she could locate some, that the company could make a nice deal selling them because there were no American sources for them and all the hobby people were trying to get their hands on them to resell.

I told her "Let me ask my husband...." and handed him the phone. And heard him walk over to the base - and hang it up. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. And whether to call back and apologize, just in case I ever need a reference from them....

"No one talks to my wife like that" was the answer.

Good guy, that fella.

Modern Food

I've been looking at some of the 1950's cookbooks I own. Some are well thumbed, like my mother's "German Cookbook", from which she prepared alledgedly Swiss cuisine - she was born in Luzern - because she really did not have a clue as to how to cook when she met my father who was stationed in Germany. And, being the discriminating gourmet that he was, he never knew the difference.

Every dinner in my childhood consisted of a hunk of meat (usually cooked to a hockey-puck like tenderness), a starch (potatoes or rice, but mostly potatoes) and one over-boiled green something or yellow something - or turnips. My father loved turnips. Personally, I have spent the decades since moving out avoiding anything turnip or turnip-like. My mother always makes them for Thanksgiving, and I try to sit upwind and look the other way as they pass by me. Sometimes there would be a pile of canned, sliced beets garnished with a lump of butter. No margarine in Dad's house.

Beef was almost always chuck steak, the kind with the big globs of delicious, oily, burnt fat on the outside. (After my mother's cooking, the only part that was still chewable. Chicken was for Sunday and barbeques outside in the summer - or, cooked in the lovely tomatoe sauce made with Spatini sauce mix and two cans of tomatoe paste until the meat had sort of disolved and fallen from the bones into the sauce. And then there was Hasenpfeffer, a roast Mom also made on Sundays a couple of times a year. It was one of the few things that actually was never overcooked, but watched like a hawk until it was perfect. We all loved it, with the slightly vinegary gravy and carrots that fell apart into morsels of wonderful tenderness.

And then Mom got a real refridgerator to replace the Kelvinator that she had been given as a wedding present for her first appartment. This one had a freezer that made ice cubes, as opposed to the little tin box in the top center of the old one, that would keep a quart of ice cream and two trays of water semi-solid as long as no one opened the door too much.

And with the new refridgerator and freezer came a journey to the frozen foods aisle of the A&P and Shop-rite.

And then there was the Sunday that Mom asked me to take out the meat for the hasenpfeffer.

And I discovered it still had little furry feet left on by the butcher. To my credit, I did not tell my siblings, and I ate it. Eventually, my sister found out - and that was the end of hasenpfeffer on Sundays.

If we had hamburgers at home, they were always made "German-style", meaning containing minced onion and breadcrumbs or crackers and an egg. They were charcoal black and crusty, and about a third the size of the raw meat by the time Mom got done with them. You could use them as a weapon if the other siblings got on your nerves, and we did, too. They also came in handy if you had a stubborn front tooth that was wiggling but not quite out yet, and the Little Rascals thing of tying a string around it and the other end to a doorknob while slamming the door was too daunting to try.

So here I sit, fanning through pages of artfully arranged pastel plastic plates, ganished with bright red tomatoes and little poofy dabs of fluffy white stuff that could be mayo, or whipped cream, or Marshmellow Fluff. There is usually a glass of transparent liquid on a coaster, and a bunch of shiney bright thingies to fill up the empty table space.

The reality was that if there was something fluffy and white on the plate either Mom made whipped mashed potatoes for the starch requirement, or she was doing her nails while cooking, and put the cotton ball down for a minute. The potatoes did taste better, tho.

The Talking Machine

(Click in image for a full-sized scan)

From Book One of an encyclopedia, vintage 1933, that belonged to my father, and was one of my favorite amusements as a child. I spent countless hours with one volume or another of these books flopped open on the floor next to my bed. So, being a child of the 1960's I had a rather odd collection of knowledge about outdated machinery and old victorian poetry. Some of the information is still useful, some of the information on art and language is timeless. But, whew, the science. And the social studies. And even the arts and crafts. When was the last time a child had access to a discarded soap box to make a doll bed. Or a boy needed a list of tools that every lad should have, and instructions on how to make a toolbox from an orange crate?

I've had enough trouble trying to explain to my kids about those things called records that used to be played with a needle on a turntable. On a Gramophone. A thing that you cranked - not plugged in. In a house that might not even have had electricity back in 1930...

Gas prices

We have two cars. One of them, the one we just bought, takes regular gas. The other one takes premium because it is an older, high performance car that we really only use as a spare. My husband bought it as a collectible, intending to drive it only a few miles a month to car shows. So it sits in the driveway, snuggled under a huge cover, for most of the month.

Unfortunately, we don't always have the option to leave it there. Sometimes, he can't commute by train, or we need to go two different places, or we just need to transport things that won't fit into the newer, smaller car, but will fit into the massive trunk of the other, a 1996 Impala SS.

Two weeks ago, the new car had to go in for a three month checkup. It was a weekend, so I needed to go places, run errands, and I had no choice but to take the Impala. Granted, it's big. It's fast. It corners like a bus, and I could put all three dogs and the kids in the truck and have room left over for groceries. Park it somewhere in all its gleaming mean black glory, and there is always some guy, hands in pockets, checking it out when we come back to it in the parking lot. They never expect to see it driven by a woman, or comment when I say that it is my husband's car. Well, maybe to tell me that they wanted one but their wife refused to let them buy it. I tell them that my husband bought it and snuck it into the driveway without consulting me, and they sort of nod and you know exactly what they are thinking. That they would be dead if they did that. And I tell them that I was so pissed that I refused to drive it for more than a year. And now he and I have to flip over who gets to use it - until the past year or so.

Not since I was a teenager have I ever found myself in a gas station with no choice but to use a credit card to buy enough gas to get home. There have been times when I have had to scrounge for the change in the ashtray, or borrow a buck or two from a passenger. But $3.53 a gallon for gas? Or, rather, more than forty bucks just to top off the tank in the big car? Yikes. Get gas and suddenly I am seventeen and driving Dad's Pontiac Bonneville to the Merit station, and fumbling through my purse to find that last dollar in change while some kid who barely speaks English is glaring at me for holding things up.

I'm lucky because I live where I can walk to the post office and the bank and the grocery store. When I was working, I could have even walked to work, or taken the free minibus with all the little old ladies who have nothing to do but go shopping at eight in the morning. I think about all those people who live in West Podunk and have to drive an hour or two to work, and have no other choice like a train or a bus. And all those maids and cleaning ladies and porters and janitors and guys that make minimum wage who have to find a way to divide a quarter of their take-home pay to the car instead of other things - like food and rent.

We all drive too much. I think part of the obesity problem in this country comes from that. No one walks. Not if they have a car. My neighbors tease me because my kids walk to school year-round. They offer me rides from the grocery store (all of two blocks away) as if I were strange for not wanting to take a car to pick up a couple of things that fit in one or two bags. When I run into then at the post office, they are utterly amazed that I'd walk ten blocks to get there. And back. But it's no big deal - by the time I park, it's a block and a half less. I walked before the price of gas went up. I walked when it was a little over a dollar a gallon. And when I stop walking, I miss it. I probably know more about the little stores and the people that own them and hang out there than most of my neighbors will ever know because all they have time to notice is the parking spaces and the lines they wait in at the post office and the bank. I get to see that geese nested under the pine tree in the front of the grocery store's lawn. And that there is a falcon stooping to pick off pigeons from the ledge of the post office. And that there is a guy with an old Jaguar that parks at the bagel shop for coffee every day. Now we nod as we pass each other.

You can't buy that stuff. And it's better not to drive past it, anyway.

Maybe the guy that kept yelling "Get a horse!" to the first Model T on the block had the right idea...and maybe I ought to get those three lazy dogs a harness and cart!

Honey, I'm home...

(scan from book on houseplants and from photo - original collage)

A new direction

I've spent most of the past forty years doing artwork - from crayons on the bond paper my father used to sneak home from work to jewelry and assemblages to watercolors and weaving. When I purchased my first home computer, the first thing I did was play with the drawing program that came with it, making some very juvenile "art" that I thought was the cat's pajamas, or, at least, Spot the cat.

Over the years, I have done web design, and a lot of graphic images, mostly to amuse myself, while continuing to design jewelry and build little scuptures from found objects. The computer art has one serious advantage. I don't have to dust it or keep the kids from playing with it and breaking it. Having just bought a very nice inkjet to go with what is becoming a large array of color and laser printers on the geeknet here at the house, I spent a lot of time over the past few days scaning and printing and just printing out some of my creations. I went to the massive expense of buying two HUGE frames for a buck apiece to fill in the living room, filled them with the kids artwork instead, and now have about fifty garage-sale finds and dollar store bargains to hang along with them of Mommie's Art. Hence the printing.

I am not too literate with file sharing, so I need to find a place to upload some of the images I want to make public. For the moment, I'm going to upload a few smaller things here. Hope you like them.

(And for the friend who asked me how I was doing after being "let go", either I haven't hit the ground yet, or it is sort of being beaten up by a munchkin around the ankles. I'm fine, thank you. Talk to me in another month when I have to pay the NJ mortgage and property tax bill, I may have a different answer...)

I've been expunged from the sweathouse.

It meant I had to climb up a flight of stairs to my office which was seriously overheated in winter and summer, with the added charm of having ductwork so dirty that I was itching all over whenever the air was circulating, especially on my neck, arms, and legs for most of the past month and a half. I had hives so bad that I wanted to claw off my skin, and I worked with that lovely sensation every day. Only when I went downstairs would the itching stop.

So I complained to the boss. I was dismissed to the point where I showed her the rash on my legs, the hairbrush dots and welts. She conceded that her daughter complained about a problem in a way that implied I was not truthful somehow.

The boss worked on the spare desk in my office last week. Monday morning, two of the laborers came into my office, entered the cockloft, and emerged with a filthy air filter. Without a word being said, it became pretty clear that the problem was not just affecting me or my imagination, but just maybe that there was a real situation of some allergen or chemical blowing all over me while I worked in my little penthouse sweatshop.

Then, Friday, I was told I was being "let go". That phrase always brings to mind an image of being dangled out a window and released. Except that the next paragraph included a "I hope you don't mind if [female boss] calls you to get help for the next few days with what is on your desk" and a request to tell him what was on my desk. So I did. And got the feeling that I was explaining nuclear fission to a duck. I was so shocked that I forgot to remove my passwords and personal stuff from the computer, and am left with the image of my kids pictures and my desktop art sitting on that machine in a place I really loathe, for the amusement of people that lied to me. And exposed me to god only knows what stuff that made my skin itch when I was just trying to work and earn a living.

I will keep repeating my phrase about 'living well is the best revenge" and move on. I know what the truth is, and what the lies were, and I am better off being an honest person than the people that misrepresent and abuse. They have the idiot accountant, the software that doesn't work, the benefit of having the mistakes of my three predecessors cleaned up even if they have no idea that there were mistakes, and all that. I did a good job. And they know I did, too. Else he would not feel compelled to fire me while asking me to accept their phone calls and help them. What kind of people do that? I know. And so do they. And it is really that simple. As the officer says "Move on, nothing to see here". Or as I just said to one of my coworkers about the pretentious religious zealot that also worked there - living like that is more than enough punishment. We make our own hell. I prefer to make my own heaven, thank you. I'd rather be the person that bought a bag of ice because I felt sorry that the boss was in pain from having a tooth extracted, and spent time doing things for others so that they would not have to do them, than in the shoes of those that abused that largesse. Not one moment in those shoes, in fact.

I'm perfectly fine in mine right now, thank you.

Now, do you really think that I could not figure out what was going on, either? I knew. Right along. Gives me points for having character that you will never have. And pity the poor soul that next moves into that office, because she will inherit a legacy of lies and mismanagement. Or he. That person will be free to take lunch at three PM, to go to the bank and never get a penny for gas, and to be expected to do the Yassssurh dance whenever the boss makes an entrance. The difference is that I mistakenly liked you as a person. And thought that the same was true of you. Now I know why the other woman cried so much (as you repeatedly told me). And it wasn't because of her mother-in-law. It was because she was trapped.

I'm not.

Resisting Urges

It's really too bad that people do not have warning labels stamped on their forehead. I can think of several people that should have the name of their favorite orifice inscribed where the public can see it and be protected. Maybe that is what the scarlett letter stood for?

Who are these people and why were they in Dad's papers?

When I was cleaning out my mother's house last spring, this tiny picture was down in what used to be my dad's workshop in the middle of a pile of papers that had not been touched since he divorced my mother in 1978 (he died in 1984). It was somewhere between old newspaper clipings, his childhood scrapbook and two Mets programs from 1962 and 1964. There was no clue as to who these people might be or what the interesting native costumes on the cut-off people (women, I presume) might be. After scaning it, I noticed that the house in the background looks to have a thatched roof, and that there is only a reflection of trees in the window, so the house is not on a street in a suburb or city. Other than that, I am stumped. The people - the young men in the back row look like they might be my grandfather and his brother Gene - don't appear in any other photos I have. The black-haired woman is dressed in fashions circa 1925-1928, with her short dress and muley shoes and cloche hat. But she's not in any other picture I have either. Are they family, ancestors, or just strangers or friends of someone?

Wish I knew the story, Dad.

A little art to tide us over

One of the magical sunflowers from last year's garden. This was a color-changing .gif, but I forgot that Blogger turns everything into a png file, so we lost the animation. Guess I'll have to figure out how to fool it.

The sunflowers in the yard are eight feet tall and more this year. The best part is that I didn't plant a single one - they reseed themselves every year, thanks to the sloppiness of the goldfinches. Mother Nature wins one again.