Ailantha - Blog

In The Belly Of The Beast; Or, Let My People Go Attack The Capitol

6/29/2022

Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST; OR, LET MY PEOPLE GO ATTACK THE CAPITOL

Try to picture this scene in your mind:
On January 6, 2021 Donald Trump, after having exhorted his supporters at his Washington D.C. rally to march to the Capitol and fight like hell,

...is escorted into the presidential limo, colloquially called The Beast. Trump tells the driver to take him to the Capitol so that he can lead the crowd.
When informed by the head of his Secret Service detail that this not doable and that he is being taken back to the White House, Trump flies into and angry rant and shouts, "I’m the f***ing president, take me up to the Capitol now!"
When he is once again denied what he wants, Donald Trump reaches into the front seat and tries to grab the steering wheel. When his Secret Service Agent takes hold of Trump's arm and tells him that he needs to take his hand off the steering wheel, Trump lunges at the agent and grabs the man by the throat.

The recounting of that scene was the most jaw-dropping testimony - though not, by far, the only jaw-dropping testimony - given at yesterday's Jan. 6 hearing by twenty-five-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson,

...former assistant to Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Ms. Hutchinson, who was in constant proximity to both Meadows and Trump and privy to the inner workings of the White House, also depicted other scenes that took place on January 6 and the days leading up to it.
She said that it was well-known by Donald Trump and his staff that there was danger brewing days before January 6. She'd heard it from her boss, Mark Meadows, who warned her that “things might get real, real, bad on January 6.” Rudy Giuliani told her that January 6 was "going to be great."
And, according to Ms. Hutchinson's sworn testimony, Donald Trump himself knew on the morning of January 6 that the crowd that came to see him was armed and primed for physical violence.
Ms. Hutchinson was among the Presidential entourage waiting in the tent behind the stage before the rally. Donald Trump was furious that much of the crowd was lingering on the National Mall rather than inside the secure perimeter around the Ellipse where he would be speaking. Trump wanted the area around him filled with supporters.
However many of his supporters didn't want to enter the secure area because they had to pass through a security check that included metal detectors called magnetometers, or mags, where weapons were being confiscated: secret service agents were finding knives, guns, pepper spray, bear spray, brass knuckles, baseball bats, and every sort of thing that could be used for a weapon among those at the rally.
Enraged by the poor optics of the sparsity of people around the Ellipse, Trump cried, “I don’t f***ing care that they have weapons! They’re not here to hurt me! Let my people in! They can march to the Capitol from here! Let the people in! Take the f***ing mags away!”
Ms. Hutchinson gave vivid descriptions of the other things she saw when she was a part of Donald Trump's staff. She told of helping clean ketchup off the wall of the Oval Office dining room when, in a beastly rage over Attorney General Bill Barr's refusal to proclaim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, Trump threw his lunch against the wall. According Hutchinson, Donald Trump angrily throwing his lunch or pulling up the table cloth so that the dishes crashed to the floor wasn't an unusual occurrence.
But it was on January 6, 2021 that Cassidy Hutchinson witnessed, along with the rest of the nation, that this man who was President of the United States had the heart of a brutal tyrant who in his uncontrollable, all-consuming anger, thought no more of destroying our democracy than of smashing a dish against a wall.
Donald Trump knew that on January 6 an armed, psyched-up battalion of his personal troops were set to invade the Capitol building,

...just as he knew that one of the objectives of his troops on that day was to abduct Vice President Mike Pence and hang him for treason.

And now, thanks to the courage and amazing testimony of a twenty-five-year-old woman who rose up from the depths of Donald Trump's inner circle,

...we know, too.

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Girl Talk

6/26/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

GIRL TALK

Yesterday morning I received phone calls from two of my daughters; coincidentally, they both called me at the same time; non-coincidentally, they both wanted to talk - and talk, and talk - about the same topic. So we made the call into a three-way conversation about what was still on all our minds.

We talked for a long time, my two daughters and I. Among other things, we talked about what would happen to women like the friend of one of my daughters who had an abortion at eighteen weeks when it was discovered that the baby she was carrying lacked major organs required to live outside the womb. The baby could well continue to grow and gestate to full term inside its mother's womb, but it would die shortly after birth. And so the mother, who had two small children, had the choice of submitting to all the physical risks and psychological trauma of four-and-a-half more months of pregnancy then going through childbirth to deliver a dead child; or she could abort. The mother had dearly wanted this baby. The abortion was devastating for her. But not nearly as devastating as the alternative would have been.
And so we talked about what would happen to women who lived in abortion-banned states who found themselves in the heartbreaking plight of my daughter's friend.
And, we wondered, what would this mean for obstetrician/gynecologists in those states? What obstetrician will even want to practice in a state where they might be put into the kinds of legal and ethical dilemmas that they'll face when the decisions they must make regarding the welfare of their patients are regulated by the state? What OB/GYN would want to weigh ending a pregnancy that could save a woman's life against facing a prison sentence if a state prosecutor decided that the treatment amounted to an illegal abortion?
It could well be that women in abortion-banned states may have to cross state lines not only for
an abortion, but to find a doctor to deliver their baby.
One of my daughters brought up data that women in all age groups and across all socio-economic spectra have abortions for a myriad of reasons, health-related, economic-related, survival related. I pointed out that if I were of the so-called pro-life persuasion, I would be campaigning for universal contraception, maternal and child health care, the availability of child care, early childhood education, and food security. But, my daughter pointed out, what would the availability of all those benefits do for a situation's like her friend's?
My daughters and I talked about how women's situations were invariably much more complicated than the idyllic images of motherhood portrayed in the so-called pro-life literature.

We talked about these and many more of our concerns over the overturn of Roe v. Wade, though it seemed that no matter how much we talked there was still more to say.
After we hung up I couldn't help but wonder how many girls were calling their moms that day.

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June 24, 2022: How My Day Went

6/24/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

JUNE 24, 2022: HOW MY DAY WENT

My son is getting married next week. The company starts arriving tomorrow. The beds aren't yet made. The bathrooms aren't yet cleaned. The grocery shopping isn't complete.
I'm huffing and puffing to get the last two chapters of my third novel finished before my publisher decides to give me the heave-ho. I still haven't finished yesterday's blog, which I was powering through at 10:10 am this morning when the bombshell dropped:

And I haven't been able to get a thing done all day long since then, as at 10:11 am my phone started ringing off the hook,

.
...then my Posse text thread started blowing up:

...then my family thread started blowing up:

...then I had to stop and watch the President speak,

...then my phone started ringing again,

...and the text threads started unspooling again:

...and now it's 7:45 pm, my day is shot, and I have to schlepp over to Dick's to buy some overpriced sports...stuff.
So, how was your day?

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Thoughts On Juneteenth

6/20/2022

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Today is the celebration of Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, our newest American holiday.
Minted just one year ago by President Biden. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that slavery was finally abolished in the United States.
And well a national holiday Juneteenth should be, a day to be celebrated not just by Black Americans, but by all Americans. As put forth by Duke University professor of African American studies Mark Anthony Neal,

...we should "think of Juneteenth and Independence Day as kind of bookends to this idea of American democracy and freedom.”
I for one like the image of the two days as being seasonal celebratory bookends: First Emancipation Day, then two weeks later Independence Day.
And yet, when you think about it, there is something problematic about Juneteenth as a holiday. Because, unlike the Fourth of July, which evokes patriotic images of American bravery and heroism in the fight for freedom,

...culminating in the birth of our nation and our Declaration of Independence, which guarantees all Americans their endowed right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

...Juneteenth cannot but evoke different images, images of what it was that those who were emancipated, either by Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in 1863 or by Union Army General Gordon Granger's announcement in Texas in 1865, were emancipated from.
No images of heroism, but of kidnapped men, women, and children taken away from their homes, families, and countries by traffickers in human flesh.

Images of generation after generation of humans enslaved from their birth to their death,

...their bodies, the bodies of their children, of their parents, of anyone they might love or cherish, all those bodies the property of an owner who could use, abuse, or sell them as they wanted.

When juxtaposed with the Fourth of July, Juneteenth shows this truth to be self-evident: that our country was not, in fact founded on the lofty premise that all men were created equal,

...or that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights

...or that among these were Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In truth, our country's foundation on slavery and the legacy it left behind is something that we, as a nation, have yet to come to terms with.
But Juneteenth is a start.

Reference:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/us/juneteenth-states-paid-holiday.html

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A Tale Of Two Rolling Blackouts

6/18/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

A TALE OF TWO ROLLING BLACKOUTS

This past week has been a scorcher here in Columbus, Ohio.
It was hot on Monday, in the upper 80's. Then on Monday night a thunder storm rolled in with pounding wind and rain, and the next day the temperature in Central Ohio soared into the high nineties. By late Tuesday afternoon, with the local power grid battered by the previous night's storm,

...and the air conditioning cranked up citywide, there were electrical blackouts in residences and businesses throughout the greater Columbus area.
However it was announced that the power blackouts across the area were in fact intentional: American Electric Power, the provider of electricity for Columbus and vicinity, had instituted rolling outages around town to prevent the entire power gird from shutting down and making it even harder to restore electricity to Central Ohio.
So over the next three days as the heat lingered in the mid-to-high-nineties some businesses were forced to shut down while their power was off,

...and over 250,00 Columbus-area folks sweltered, some for hours, others for days, without air-conditioning, refrigeration, or the ability to charge their devices.

Or else they found refuge at work or at cooling and WIFI centers set up around the city,

...or with family or friends whose residences were over the outage or spared it altogether, as was mine.
For example, my son Tommy and his fiancée, Emily,

...after the power blackout in their neighborhood rolled on to the next neighborhood, invited some power-deprived friends over for a cool sleep-over, while my nephew Randy and his wife Anusha,

...stayed at our place until the blackout moved on from their street.
Thus we Central Ohioans sweated otherwise and coped our way through a hot half-week of rolling blackouts.
But this round of rolling blackouts reminded me of another episode of rolling blackouts I once experienced.
In 2006 my daughter Claire spent most of the year working in the jungle on the outskirts of León, Nicaragua.

Claire sharing a bus ride with a load of melons.

It was when I went to visit Claire (that's me, below, on a re-purposed American Army truck, old American trucks or school buses sometimes serving as the modes of transport that stopped at the bus stops),

...that I learned that in León there were rolling power blackouts everyday.
Every night at 7 pm the lights would go out in the convent in León where Claire lived on the weekends and where I stayed while I was there.

When Claire's neighborhood went dark people walked or rode their bikes through the streets carrying flashlights. The buses still ran, and the streets in front of the open shops were lined with generators that were pulled out each night to keep the places up and open and running.
And so nightly rolling blackouts in León, Nicaragua were business as usual.
I know that the power came back on every morning at 3 am because every night I lay in bed sweating, then at 3 am by my watch the room fan would whirl back to life with a great "whoosh" and finally the room would get cool enough for me to fall asleep. (I suppose it was fortunate that I visited in October during the wintertime when the temperature seldom rose above 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Had I been there in the summertime the temperature likely would have been another ten degrees hotter. Still, I swear I never sweat so much in my life as when I was in Nicaragua).

Along with the electricity, the water also went off daily in León on a rolling basis. This seemed not to make sense, as León was surrounded by tropical rainforest and during the wet winter season it rained every day.
So why would there be a chronic water shortage?
The answer was explained to me by my wonderful young teacher at the language school in León where I spent my mornings learning Spanish while Claire worked.

My teacher, Zorayda, in our classroom in León (Unfortunately my photography skills back then left something to be desired).

Anyway, Zorayda told me that the reason for the rolling water outages was the same as the for the rolling power blackouts: people couldn't afford to pay for their utilities. Zorayda said that at any one time only thirty percent of the population could afford to pay their water and utility bills. The country's way of dealing with this problem was, instead of having 70% of its people do without water and/or electricity all of the time, to have everybody do without 25% of the time.
I once told this story about the rolling power/water outages in Nicaragua to someone who commented that it wasn't fair to those who paid their bills to have to do without because of those who didn't pay. I explained that Nicaragua was a very poor country. At that time, as today still, Nicaragua was the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere after Haiti. According to Zorayda, it wasn't always the same people who weren't paying their bills. Someone might be able to pay one month, but not the next, while someone else might be able to pay that month, but might not have paid for a few months prior.
And so that's the way León, Nicaragua opted to take care of the problem. Like the song says, "Today for you, tomorrow for me."

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My Three Takeaways From The Second Jan. 6 Insurrection Hearing

6/15/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

MY THREE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE SECOND JAN. 6 INSURRECTION HEARING

After watching the second hearing this past Monday on the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection against the United States Capitol I can't say that I found any of the testimonies to be surprising. Appalling, disturbing, terrible, incredible? Yes. But surprising? Not at bit.
What could possibly be surprising about a coterie of Donald Trump's former appointed enablers,

...stepping forward and publically singing a far different tune than they sang when they were in service to Donald Trump?
Why be shocked that these men who used to praise Trump before the world and exhibited the fiercest loyalty to him and his interests were now testifying that the man was beyond unreasonable, listened only to what he wanted to hear, cared nothing for truth or facts, refused to accept that he'd lost the election, spread totally baseless claims that there had been election fraud, spread lies and made inflammatory statements that culminated in an attempted overthrow of the United States government? No surprise in any of that. Just a different variation on a theme we've been hearing almost from the beginning of Trump's presidency sung by self-justification-seeking ex-Trump subservients.
Nor was it news, attested to by Trump's former aides, that after the election Rudy Giuliani glommed himself onto Donald Trump, gratifying him with whipped up conspiracy theories that Giuliani spewed on Fox News about stolen votes, fake ballots and a rigged election.

And who would be particularly surprised by the testimony of former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt who was fired by Fox for being the first election night analyst to call Arizona for Joe Biden?

Or would anyone be surprised to learn, as we did during the hearing, that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner called the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, on election night to complain and demand that the Arizona call for Biden be retracted?

No, almost all the testimonies given at Monday's hearing sounded like more of the same since our country's descent into the Age of Trump: accounts of lies, corruption, self-dealing, fraud, and injustice ad nauseam.
That was my first takeaway from this second Jan. 6 hearing: That it was no news, but it was far from good news.
But that wasn't my only takeaway. I came away with two more thoughts, one that gave me hope, the other that sent a chill down my spine.
Here is my second takeaway from the second Jan. 6 hearing: That, in spite of the attack against our democracy perpetrated by Donald Trump and his camp, we were now seeing the wheels of justice turn. We were watching serious people carrying out a serious undertaking, thankfully minus the loud-mouthed, clownish, bullying behavior that is too often the modus operandi during Congressional hearings nowadays - think the antics of Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Lindsay Graham. And I couldn't help but think of the army of loyal civil servants in the justice department - not the big-name celebrity politicians, judges, or justices - who are hard at work every day beneath the radar seeking out and revealing the truth. Thus even if Donald Trump and his accomplices manage to escape justice for their role in the Capitol insurrection, they have not succeed in shutting down the pursuit of the truth. And this gives me hope.
My final takeaway was a brief comment made by ABC political analyst Rick Klein,

...who mentioned in passing that the Committee members know they must finish the hearings on the Jan. 6 Insurrection before the 2022 midterm elections because otherwise if the Republicans gain the majority in Congress the hearings will be shut down. He pointed out that if the Republicans were currently the majority there would have been no hearings. He also offered that if the Republicans take control they may well initiate a criminal investigation of the current members of the Jan. 6 Committee.
I found those words a frightening reminder that it is ultimately we the American people who hold our democracy in our hands and that we have the power through our vote to hold onto democracy or toss it away for love of a glittery idol.

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My Three Take-Aways From The First Jan. 6 Insurrection Hearing

6/13/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

MY THREE TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE FIRST JAN. 6 INSURRECTION HEARING

Last Thursday night I, along with much of of our nation (at least I hope much of our nation), watched the first televised hearing of the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.

The following day the commentary on the news sites was plentiful, with with a number of analysts distilling into "takeaways" what they considered the most important and meaningful findings from that first hearing:

I came away from watching the hearing with some takeaways of my own, not necessarily the most critical or newsworthy revelations made by the Committee, but rather several things disclosed during the hearing or brought up during the TV commentary immediately afterwards that struck me. These were the words and images I took away because I couldn't leave them behind, and they've kept me thinking, pondering, and shuddering ever since.
And so I'll add to the editorial pot three more takeaways - that is to say, the three that most struck me, or shocked me - from the first hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection against the United States Capitol:

1. The Insurrection Against The U.S. Capitol Was Planned And Coordinated In Advance, With The Proud Boys Ready And Waiting To Spearhead The Attack.
Nick Quested, a journalist who was in the midst of creating a documentary on the Proud Boys, followed a group of Proud Boys on January 6, 2021, to Washington D.C. where it was his understanding that they were going to attend the Donald Trump rally.
Mr. Quested was subpoenaed before the Committee,

...where he testified that the group of Proud Boys he was documenting arrived at the Capitol an hour and a half before Trump was to speak. But instead of gathering at the Ellipse, the area where the rally was to take place and where Trump would speak, this group of between two and three hundred headed in the opposite direction towards the Capitol building. This confused Mr. Quested, as he believed that the Proud Boys had come to attend the rally and hear Donald Trump speak. However they instead appeared at first to be scoping out the area around the Capitol building, and then they gathered at the barriers in front of the building.
And here, in front of the barriers, where there were initially not more than a dozen Capitol Police officers on duty, the Proud Boys waited until the thousands of rallying Trump supporters would be whipped into a mental state of high anger and attack by Donald then commanded by him to march down Pennsylvania Avenue - to where the Proud Boys were waiting - and "Fight like hell."
And it was those angry thousands, fueled by Donald Trump, who launched the Proud Boys' planned insurrection against the Capitol as they followed blindly behind them and gave the assault the thrust and strength of overpowering numbers.

2. There Are Those Who Love Donald Trump Obsessively And Would Do Anything For Him
During the hearing recorded testimony was played from several men who've been charged with or convicted of criminal offenses from their part in the assault on the Capitol. The thread that ran through all of their testimonies was that they did what they did because Donald Trump asked them to.
One man, Eric Barber, circled below,

...who's charged with theft and unlawful demonstration at the Capitol, said of Donald Trump, "He personally asked us to come to D.C. that day. And I thought, 'For everything he's done for us, if this is the only think he's gonna ask of me, I'll do it.'"
Another man, Robert Schornack, below,

...who was sentenced to thirty-six months' probation for breaking into the Capitol, said, "Trump asked us to come. Trump has only asked me for two things: He asked me for my vote and he asked me to come on January 6."
The words of these two men struck me as the words that would come from an obsessed besotted lover. Or maybe from a child bound by an overwhelming love and duty - as well as an overwhelming desire for parental love - to carry out an unreasonable demand by a tyrannical parent. Or from a religious devotee showing his personal love and devotion to his God by doing whatever his God commanded him.
That these men - and obviously many others in this country - have in their minds this deep personal loving relationship with Donald Trump, as if he were their beloved, their loved parent, their religion, or perhaps an amalgam of all those things, this struck me as so strange. And so terrifying.

3. A Tale Of Two Police Forces
Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, in her testimony before the Committee members,

...told of standing behind the barricade in front of the Capitol building on January 6 facing a crowd of thousands. She told of how, though being outnumbered many times over she and her fellow officers attempted to hold back the barricades against the attackers. But they were overwhelmed. 140 police officers were injured. Five officers were killed.
Video was shown of Officer Edwards, in her attempt to hold back the insurrectionists, being knocked down by the mob onto the Capitol steps then pinned beneath a barricade.

Officer Edwards was knocked unconscious in her fall against the steps, however when she came to she continued assisting her fellow officers and washing out the eyes of those who had been pepper-sprayed by the insurrectionists. She saw Officer Brian Sicknick in distress, his face as white as a sheet of paper. Officer Sicknick would die the next day. Officer Edwards described the scene outside the Capitol building as a war zone. "There were officers on the ground," she said. "They were bleeding, they were throwing up ... I saw friends with blood all over their faces, I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage, it was chaos. I can't even describe what I saw."
Officer Edwards would sustain further injuries that day, and her fall onto the Capitol steps resulted in a traumatic brain injury that has so far prevented her from returning to the Capitol Police Force.
Now, as moving as Officer Edwards' testimony was, still it was a post-hearing observation made by MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell that struck me as truly perceptive and thought-provoking.

Lawrence O'Donnell commented that over the years his work has brought him often to the Capitol, and that the Capitol Police Force always struck him as a polite, friendly outfit whose purpose was to be helpful to visitors to the Capitol. "More like glorified doormen," was Mr. O'Donnell's description of his impression of the Capitol Police.
These folks, according to Mr. O'Donnell, were the last police force in the world one would have imagined taking on a violent mob of 2,500 insurrectionists invading the United States Capitol. And yet these police officers did take on the attackers, though, as Caroline Edwards pointed out, she and her fellow officers were not trained for combat, which was what this was. But, as Officer Edwards also pointed out, on this day they were doing their duty to their country. They were protecting Democracy.
Mr. O'Donnell then juxtaposed the brave, heroic response of the Capitol Police to the attacking mob of insurrectionists,

...and the cowardly response of the Uvalde Police, who allowed nineteen children and two teacher to bleed to death while they loitered around outside the school building because they were afraid to go inside and confront the gunman.

One never knows where heroism will spring to life or where it will wither miserably.

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Emily And Tommy's Pre-Wedding Party

6/6/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

EMILY AND TOMMY'S PRE-WEDDING PARTY

On Friday, May 13, Tom and I drove from Columbus, Ohio, to suburban Detroit for a pre-wedding celebration in honor of our son Tommy and his fianceé Emily.

The party was hosted by Emily's Mom, Lisa,

...who graciously welcomed us to her home,

...where we spent the night, as did Emily and Tommy, too.
The party was the following day, Saturday, May 14, and so we were up early,

...and after breakfast Tommy, Emily and I got to work icing the mini-cupcakes I'd made and brought along.

Vanilla rosettes,

...and chocolate cream-filled.

Taste-testers

Lisa, meanwhile, among other things, put together flower arrangements,

...and supervised the setting up and decorating of the house inside,

...and outside.

The day before Lisa had set up a welcome easel at the front door.

After the cupcakes were iced Emily took us on an outing to the next town over, a pretty place called Birmingham,

...where we went for a walk in the city park,

...then we went for lunch at an Irish restaurant called The Dow that had a cute, rustic interior,

...and terrific food. Tom had the Shepherd's Pie,

...Tommy had the Impossible Burger with sweet potato fries,

...Emily had grilled cheese,

...and I had an Avocado Burger but requested that they leave out the burger and double up on the avocado, which request our wait staffer was happy to oblige. I also had some hot, homemade kettle chips that were out of this world.

By the time we returned home after lunch Emily's sister Megan had arrived to help,

...along with a cadre of relatives and friends and soon the party preparations were in full-tilt boogie.

I set up the plates of cookies that I had made for the party and the cupcakes, along with some pizzelles sent over from a neighbor.

Mary set up a photo booth in the garage,

...and she also made two beautiful gift baskets to raffle off.

At five o'clock the guests began arriving and soon after the party was in full swing.

The food was delicious,

...and a happy time was had by all.

And after the evening was over and all the guests were gone we did what one always does after a successful party: sat around and basked in the post-party glow.

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Nineteen Little Chairs

6/1/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

NINETEEN LITTLE CHAIRS

A few blocks from my house on Hamilton Road at the corner of Clark State in Gahanna, is located Peace Lutheran, a church with a wide, rolling front lawn on which there is a sign usually announcing upcoming church activities.

But yesterday there was something else on the lawn of Peace Lutheran.

On the slope above the church sign there were nineteen little chairs. On either end of the little chairs were two big chairs.

To anyone who lives in or not far from Gahanna, Ohio, I challenge you to drive by Peace Lutheran without tearing up. To anyone who can't see the nineteen little chairs for themselves, I challenge you to look at the above picture without imagining a little one whom you cherish in one of those empty chairs.
As for me, I wasn't up to either challenge. Because when I saw those chairs I couldn't help thinking of the little ones whom I cherish above all.

Today I wrote a letter to my Senator, Rob Portman, and told him about the nineteen little chairs and how they made me cry. I entreated him to examine his conscience and look into his soul and I demanded that he take action to ban assault rifles.
I challenge everyone to write to their senators. We can't let them forget about the nineteen little chairs; otherwise who knows if next time it could be our child's chair that is left empty?

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My 2022 Commencement Speech

5/29/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

MY 2022 COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

Once again graduation weekend is upon us, and so once again it's time for me to give my yearly Commencement Speech in which I offer graduates a few words of worldly wisdom and advice to help them along their way on subjects that might not be covered by the keynote speakers at their commencement ceremonies.
And so, for all the new grads out there, here it is, my 2022 Commencement Speech:

1. Try not to be an "oughtacrat," always telling people how you think they ought to do things, or an "I'dacrat," always telling people what you'd have done in their situation. (See post from 8/5/2014, "A tale of two 'Crats" https://www.ailantha.com/blog/a-tale-of-two-crats ).

2. Always keep a flashlight, candles, and matches on hand - and easy to find in the dark - in case the electricity goes off.

3. When loading the dishwasher, put all the spoons together in one compartment, all the forks in another, and all the knives in another. Putting them away will be much faster.

4. If your calling in life is be an artist, writer, composer, photographer, performer, or any other kind of creative, by all means follow your calling;

...but plan on having another job to support yourself, as 90% of the world's creatives do. (And remember that Stephen King couldn't afford to quit his day job until after his second best-seller).

5. Whenever you have an overnight houseguest make sure you have an extra toothbrush on hand in case they forget theirs.

6. There's a difference between what people think and how people feel. Care a lot about people's feelings.

Care about what people think, too, but not too much.

7. Whenever you buy a batch of berries, wash the fruit before you put it into the refrigerator. That way you won't have to wash a few at a time every time you want to eat some.

8. Pour a little watermelon juice into your iced tea. It's naturally sweet and delish.

9. Cut up the plastic soda bottle holders so that animals don't get themselves stuck in the circles

10. If you slather raspberry jam on a slice of white bread, fold it in half and use your imagination it tastes kind of like a jelly donut.

11. If you find a pair of shoes you love, buy several pairs because when you want to replace those favorite of favorite shoes there's a good chance that exact shoe will no longer exist.

12.Remember that your problems aren't necessarily everybody else's.

13. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" - Simone Weil

14. No matter what occupation or endeavor you might be pursuing, always remember that being nice covers a lot of sins.

Best Wishes, Class of 2022!

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