Ailantha - Blog

Out Of This World, Part 1

11/20/2019

     Congress is holding Presidential impeachment hearings and the bombshells are dropping daily; our country is on the cusp of a Presidential election year and new candidates are popping into the ring by the day; there's been another mass shooting; chaos reigns in Hong Kong; a hunter in China caught bubonic plague after eating a wild rabbit; there's a world-wide loneliness epidemic for which reason the U.K. has appointed a Minister for Loneliness; the world is on fire. Literally. And my house is a mess.
     But all local, national and world events have been humming by on the edge of my awareness, as has been my neglected housekeeping, ever since I made a rather spur-of-the-moment decision about six weeks ago, a decision that took me out of the world, or at least away from my previous occupations and preoccupations in my little corner of it.
It was just about six weeks ago that my siblings and I came to the undeniable realization that a decision had to be made regarding our ninety-nine-and-a-half-year-old mother: if she continued to stay in her house it could only be on condition of finding round-the-clock care for her, along with a full-time housekeeper, plus having my brother and sister-in-law, who lived several miles away, keeping a constant eye on her welfare. Otherwise she would have to move to a senior care facility where she would be safe and have her daily needs taken care of.
     "Should I offer to bring Mom out here to be with us?" I asked my hubby Tom out of the blue.
     "Yeah, why not," replied Tom, just like that.
    So just like that I proposed to my siblings that our mother move from Seaford, Dealware, to Gahanna, Ohio, or the nearby vicinity, where I'd surely be able to find her a nice care facility.
      And just like that my sibs agreed, and within one day the decision of what to do about our mom was agreed upon. By everyone except our mom.
       But, fortunately for all of us, our mom also knew it was her time to move on. In fact our mother - who's had a clairvoyant streak her whole life - had recently been having confused premonitions that she'd soon be moving out of her house. We lumped her confusion about moving - which no one had yet brought up to her or among each other - together with the other occasional episodes of confusion she'd been experiencing. But she knew she was moving. Weeks before we knew, she knew.
       To be continued...

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/europe/uk-britain-loneliness.html

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Another New Life

11/16/2019

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     Sometimes it occurs to me that people during their lifetime actually live a number of lives within that lifetime, one life opening up the way to the next, which opens the way to another and so on, each old life being simultaneously - and paradoxically - both left behind and brought along as we move on to each new life.
      Of course the frontier between one life and the next exists in each person's individual perception, if that frontier even exists at all; it could be that there are people - maybe even most people for all I know - whose lives seem to be woven of whole cloth, who have no sense of moving from life to life within the span of their lifetime.
         But as for me, I feel that I have crossed a number of new-life frontiers in the six-plus decades I've been kicking around the planet, each subsequent life full of new experiences, unanticipated outcomes and quite amazing, sometimes astonishing, discoveries.

I think of childhood as my first life, the starting point where I lived for a dozen and some years before I left it behind and brought it along with me,

...when I crossed into the new life of my high school years,

...which I left behind for the new frontier of college life.

Then there was the life of the years I lived and worked in Germany;

...followed by the early years of married life.

And then the strange, new, challenging yet wonderful, all-encompassing life of parenthood, the entrance into which somehow made me feel as if I'd become a card-carrying member of the human race.

It was during the years that I think of as my Parenting Life that I began to write,

...and became a published author.

It was also during that life that I became a piano teacher,

...a produced playwright,

...and the co-writer of a musical Western comedy,

...that, unfortunately, never made it farther than my living room and the living rooms of some of my friends.

Then those years were gone to wherever years go to, my children grown up and moved on to start their own lives, and I crossed over into another life in which I mostly sat on the sidelines of my children's lives, though moving in and out of their lives as I was needed or wanted, relishing along the way the joys of their successes, marriages,

...the births of my grandchildren,

...while helping my children with life's challenges and adversities in whatever way I could.
Meanwhile in my own life I went about my daily routine such as it was, teaching piano, plowing my way through a novel I hoped to someday finish,

...getting together with my Posse,

...traveling to visit my children from time to time,

...and occasionally thinking about the old Peter, Paul and Mary song called "Mon Vrai Destin" - my true destiny -

...and wondering whether I'd ever find my true destiny, or if I were, perhaps, already living it out.
But it turned out that I wasn't yet.
In 2013 Tom and I walked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago de Compostela through Spain (see www.tightenyourboots.net and www.andlightenyourpack.com).

     A friend suggested that I write a daily blog during the journey and, following her advice, I did. The web logging of our journey along the Camino turned out to be for me the entrance to my next life, as by the time the trip was over I'd collected a very small but engaged readership, some of whose members expressed to me the hope that I would continue blogging.
        But now that I was back from Spain I wondered what there could be for me to blog about. It was one of my readers who solved my dilemma when she told me, "Just share your observations on daily life."
         And so I decided to do that, and on December 20, 2013, my blog "Ailantha" was born,

...with this first post, explaining the blog's title:
     Ailanthus Altissima, called either Tree of Heaven or Slum Palm, is a tree that thrives in places where no respectable plant would grow: in vacant lots, between the broken glass in alleys, up through rubble and cracks in the sidewalk. It is widely considered an urban blight, an ugly invasive eye sore, and because of its tenacity, campaigns to rip it from the face of the planet are ongoing and expensive.
    But there are others out there who praise the Ailanthus for standing up to the asphalt and concrete and bringing a bit of welcome shade and greenery, a little oasis for passersby. So what is Ailanthus? Occasional oasis or tenacious blight? And which will its spin-off Ailantha be?
     And so, in my sixth decade of life, I crossed over yet another border into another new life as I began writing everyday and posting my observations as a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations, hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

In 2017 when my novel, "Equal and Opposite Reactions" was finally published,

...it seemed not so much as if I'd crossed over into another new life, but rather as if, like a literary Christopher Columbus, I'd discovered - or rather, been propelled into - a whole new world.

       And so my life had settled into a groove of blogging, writing - I recently learned that my next novel, "Hail Mary," the sequel to "Equal and Opposite Reactions" will be released in May 2020 - teaching, traveling, and taking care, more or less, of the daily business of my life such as it was, leaving me to suppose that I had finally discovered my vrai destin, and that there would be only one more new life left for me to discover somewhere in that mysterious country of my own old age.
        But no. I have just stepped over the border into yet another new life, one I've head tell of so often from others of my generation that I marvel that my own entrance into it is turning out to be for me such a prodigiously unheralded experience.
         And yet it is, as I now understand it must be for everyone who steps into this new life.

Last Tuesday, November 12, my 99 1/2-year-old mother,

...moved from her home in Seaford, Delaware to an assisted living facility nine-tenths of a mile from my house. I'm now my mother's guardian, advocate, daily visitor, emotional care-giver, and provider of her needs.
It's a whole new life.

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Welcome To First Grade

11/7/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:

Thursday got off to an early start for my youngest grand daughter, who joined Pinky Poo and myself in the living room at 6:15 am where I was doing some writing and Pinky was doing some hanging with me.

Soon the rest of the family was up and about the morning's chores.

Then it was off to school again.

...where some of the big kids were playing tether ball before the bell.

After we dropped the girls off at school Tom and I took a leisurely stroll back home, admiring, as always, the flora and fauna along the way.

Birds of Paradise

When lunch time rolled around I suggested to Tom, since it was our second-to-last day, that we return to Manhattan Beach,

...for lunch at an eatery called The Kettle.

And when the end of the school day rolled around we walked back to the school to pick up the girls at their classrooms,

...where, thanks to the perennially fair weather, backpacks can be hung outdoors on hooks outside the classrooms.

Our youngest grand daughter was having a hard time during the walk home,

...whimpering that she'd had a long, hard, day, that she was tired, that school was too long and there was too much homework. To which her older sister replied with a sigh, "Welcome to first grade." Big sister then endeavored to cheer up little sister, saying, "When we get home, how about if we make you some limeade?"
      Now, I had not only never made limeade before; I'd never even made lemonade that didn't come from a mix.
       But my grand daughter assured me that she'd show me how it was done when we arrived home.
       First, she directed us to pick some limes from the lime tree in the front yard.
       Then she procured a pitcher which she filled with ice,

...and water.

It was my job to cut the limes out of their skins,

...after which the skinless limes were stirred into the ice water.

Then it was time to add the sugar which, I was informed, was the key to making the limeade delicious, as opposed to so-so. If too much or too little sugar was added the limeade would turn out so-so. However if just the right amount was added, I was told, it would be delicious.
So we add the sugar a little bit at a time,

...tasting as we went along,

...until it was pronounced delicious.

So delicious and refreshing was our limeade that it gave us all a nice mid-afternoon lift, which put us more in the mood to get some chores done,

...and get the homework out of the way,

     When my daughter arrived home from work she proposed that, as all the chores and homework were done, we go down to the beach to play for a while then have dinner out.
       So we did.
       We arrived in time for a breath-taking sunset,

...though the beautiful, surreal purple haze that hung in the sky was, sadly, the product of the wildfires that were burning to the north of Los Angeles.

We played in the sand and the surf with the other beach-goers while the sun set.

When it was dark we walked up from the beach,

...to a little restaurant called Pit Fire Pizza,

...where we shared a variety of healthy options.

Then we headed for home.

Epilogue:
     On Saturday morning, October 26, Tom and I left warm, sunny Los Angeles, and by late Saturday afternoon we were back in Columbus, where the weather was cold and rainy.
       However we decided to make the best of it and headed over to a local spot called The Gahanna Grill where it was warm and cozy,

...and nice inside.

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Booed!

11/4/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:
During Tom's and my visit to Los Angeles the week before last, all around the neighborhood Halloween was in the air,

...and in the yards,

...and in the trees,

...and on the houses,

...and the fences,

...and the mailboxes.

And then on Tuesday afternoon Halloween arrived on my daughter and son-in-law's driveway in the form of a mysterious little bag of pre-Halloween treats,

...mostly of the sort-of-healthy variety.

     Inside the bag was a note addressed to my youngest grand daughter with the message, "You've been booed!"
   When my daughter returned home from work she unraveled the mystery for the rest of us: She had received a text from the mother of one of my grand daughter's classmates asking permission to "boo" my grand daughter, to boo being apparently a new verb form meaning to leave a surprise of a small bag of treats outside the house of a friend without revealing one's identity. However it appears that boo-acceptable protocol involves the mother of the booer asking advance permission to boo of the mother of the booee.
      Now, though this was the first time anyone in the family had experienced a booing, all of us, adults and children alike, instinctively knew that when one is booed one is socially obligated boo back, which meant that one of the adults was now going to have to run to the store some time in the very near future to buy a small bag and some treats and then drive over to the booer's house to surreptitiously boo them back.
         However, the following evening the same grand daughter was booed again by another classmate who left another bag of not altogether unhealthy treats. Now two reciprocatory boo bags of semi-healthy treats had to be assembled and delivered.
         By then both of our grand daughters were in the spirit of the boo. The one who had been booed twice not only wanted to boo back her booers, but wanted to boo several other of her friends. Our other grand daughter who had not yet been booed nonetheless wanted to boo half a dozen of her friends as well.
       Their parents compromised, allowing the girls a total of ten boos between them, and the following afternoon after school Tom and I took the girls to the Dollar Tree to pick out ten boo bags and an assortment of somewhat healthy treats to fill them.
        Deciding which friends to boo was fun for the children, as was shopping for the bags and treats and assembling the boo bags. But then came the parental tasks of contacting the parents to ask permission to boo then finding the time to drive all over the town to do the booing. It turned out to be quite a schlepp.
         I can only imagine that the practice of booing, having begun, will not go away but will likely lead to an era of boocular proliferation in future Halloweens.
         But then maybe after a while all the over-worked, over-extended, over-exhausted parents will mobilize to ban the boo, dropping on the practice a group kibosh,

...(the origin of which word comes from a Gaelic word meaning "coif of death").

I don't expect the youngsters will enjoy Halloween any the less.

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Irish Soda Bread And Other Hankerings

11/2/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:

On Monday morning, after the family walk to school, and after which our daughter and son-in-law had taken off for work,

...I confessed to Tom that I had a hankering to walk or drive down to Manhattan Beach for breakfast at a little beach eatery,

...called The Local Yolk.

We opted to drive,

...deciding that we'd do our walking through the town and along the pier after breakfast.

The Local Yolk,

...where I had my usual.

After breakfast we drove to downtown Manhattan Beach,

...from where we walked down to the pier,

...to enjoy the views.

Then we returned home, stopping along the way at Ralph's,

...as one of my grand daughters had asked me if I could buy some celery, peanut butter, and raisins.
I knew she was asking me to buy the fixings to make one of my specialties,

...Ants on a Log.

...which were waiting for her when she arrived home from school.

The next day, Tuesday, I decided around lunch time that I had hankering to drive to the next beach town over, Hermosa Beach,

...to a pizza place there called Paisanos,

...where they serve up a heavenly slice.

      The following morning during breakfast my grand daughter asked me if we could make my Coke bread after school.
       "My Coke bread?" asked I.
       "What you made when you came to help Mommy after I was born," said she.
        "She means your Irish Soda Bread," said my daughter, who explained that she had been telling her daughters how I made Irish Soda Bread, one of her favorites, for her after she had her babies.
        So, as my grand daughter was having a hankering to bake and try my Irish Soda Bread, after school we made a batch. Here's the recipe:

                                                 Irish Soda Bread

     4 cups flour
     1 teaspoon baking soda
     2 Tablespoons sugar
     4 Tablespoons butter
     1 cup raisins
     1 egg
     1 1/3 cups butter milk (Or add 1 Tablespoon vinegar to regular milk and let stand for 5 minutes, which is what I do).
      More butter
      More sugar

     Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
      Sift together the dry ingredients.

Add the 4 Tablespoons of butter and mix with hands or a pastry blender until the size of small peas. Stir in the raisins. Beat the egg lightly and mix with part of the butter milk. Add to the dry ingredients. Add more butter milk as needed. (I always need all the butter milk).

The dough should be a bit sticky but solid.

Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead swiftly and lightly for a few seconds.

Place the smooth side on a lightly floured baking sheet. Make a round loaf. Cut a deep cross on top, cutting almost all the way through.

Bake for 35 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on top.
(While waiting for the loaf to cook you could do your homework,

...maybe having to help a grown-up figure it out).

When the bread is done, making a hollow sound when tapped,

...take a stick of butter and rub it over the hot bread.

Then sprinkle a heavy layer of sugar over the butter.

Let cool for a few minutes, then slice and spread the slices with butter.

Sometimes something just really hits the spot.

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My Precious, Precious Palm Trees

11/1/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:
It had been an excellent birthday weekend (see yesterday's post), but on Monday morning it was back to the weekday routine, which started as usual with the walk to school.

Having lived most of my life in the East and Midwest, I still haven't lost my enchantment with the West Coast ecosystem nor my sense of the wonder at the concept of walking to school every morning in the midst of palm trees,

...fruit trees,

...cerulean blue skies,

...and balmy air.

I imagine my grandchildren, having been born in Los Angeles, must take the wonderful climate, skies, flora and fauna - not to mention living near the ocean - for granted, except when their Ohio Grammie comes for a visit and constantly reminds them what a beautiful place they live in.

Still, I learned during a visit earlier in the year that my discourses on the natural beauty of their environment - or at least on my love of palm trees - have not gone completely unremarked by my grandchildren, when, during a walk with the children, my youngest grand daughter,

...pointed towards the sky and said, "Look, Grammie!"
    Not sure what she was pointing to, I asked her what she was pointing to.
    "Look, Grammie," she repeated, sounding slightly exasperated and continuing to poke her finger heavenward.
    I looked up again. "What?" I asked.
     With a look that asked how I could possibly not know what she was pointing to, she said, "Grammie, Look! Your precious, precious palm trees!"

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A Big 4-0

10/30/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:

The following day, Saturday, was the day of our daughter's birthday party.
But there was much to do before the party, starting with, of course,

...the Saturday morning soccer games,

...followed by the Saturday afternoon soccer games.

A good spot for little sisters to hang during their big sisters' game.

After the soccer games we drove home, at one point in the trip passing what would have been the most beautiful vista of the city backdropped by mountains,

...if the scene had not been blurred by the smoke wafting south from the wildfires currently burning to in the north and western parts of Los Angeles County. Thankfully, the fires hadn't reached the South Bay area where my daughter's family lives.
      When we arrived home it was time to begin the party preparations. The dinner would be catered, but there was still setting up to be done and a birthday cake to be made.
     Earlier in the day my daughter had begun the assembly of her birthday cake, that is, one of her two birthday cakes, this one being a two-layer ice cream cake.
      She made the cake by taking two 9" x 13" cake pans and filling each with a carton of ice cream, one pan with Cookies and Cream,

...and the other with a flavor called Tillamook Monster Cookie, which was vanilla ice cream mixed with M&M's, cookie hunks and a few other yummy ingredients.

She then topped one of the pans of ice cream with a mix of crushed Oreo cookies and chocolate fudge topping. Then she placed both pans of ice cream into the freezer for several hours.
My grand daughter and I made the whipped cream for the icing,

...by pouring a quart of heavy whipping cream into a bowl,

...adding four tablespoons of powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract,

...then whipping until peaks formed, being careful not to over-beat, which will leave one with lumpy, buttery whipped cream.

Perfect!

Then my daughter removed the layers from freezer and the girls helped her with the assembly,

...then the icing of the cake with the whipped cream,

...and the adding of the sprinkles.

After the cake was finished there remained only arranging chairs for the guests,

...setting up a slide show in the living room,

...and doing some drink-prep,

...for the fruit water.

At 5:15 pm the food arrived, healthy, yummy fare from a local restaurant called Mendocino Farms,

...including steak, chicken and veggie sandwiches.

By 5:30 the guests began arriving,

...and digging in.

Tyson and Pinky's friend Sneakers was also among the party guests.

Among the party highlights were the slide show,

...which the children especially seemed to enjoy;

...a show put on by some of the children,

...that the dogs joined in;

...Tyson hamming it up;

....the serving of the birthday cakes:

...the ice cream cake,

...and a beautiful buttercream layer cake from a local baker called Susiecakes,

Both cakes were the stuff of dessert dreams.

And then there was a beautiful surprise birthday card made by the children,

...decorated with mermaids and merdogs,

...palm trees,

...birthday cakes,

...and the ocean.

It was a great party.

      The following morning at 7 am my two grand daughters bounced into Tom's and my bedroom and onto our bed.
       "Wake up, Grammie," they cried, "we want to make blueberry muffins for Mommy's birthday."
      Now, they had told me before the trip that they wanted to make blueberry muffins during our visit. I did not know that the plan was to be that we would make them on Sunday morning at 7 am.
      However this day was my daughter's actual birthday, and the girls wanted to surprise her.
      So I hauled out of bed, got the fixins' together and pulled up on my laptop my recipe for Go Crazy Blueberry Muffins,

...so called because you go crazy with the blueberries.
     Here's the recipe:
      Go Crazy Blueberry Muffins
   Muffins:
3 cups flour
   2 cups sugar
   4 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup vegetable oil
   2 eggs
   2/3 cup milk
   4 cups blueberries

Streusel topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 of 1/3 cup flour (sorry, I don't know how to better express this!)
   1 tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a muffin pan with muffin liners.

Combine the 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, and baking powder. Add the vegetable oil.

Lightly beat the eggs with the milk and stir into the flour mixture.

The batter will be very thick.

Lightly fold in the blueberries.

Fill the muffin cups to the top.

To make the streusel topping:
Mix together the 1/4 cup of sugar, the 1/2 of 1/3 cup of flour and the cinnamon. Cut in the 1 tablespoon of butter until it's pretty crumb-ish.

Top each muffin with some streusel, maybe a tablespoon or two, but not too much, even if you end up not using all the topping (otherwise the topping might sink into the muffin, as over-heavy streusel toppings tend to do. So keep the topping on the light side).

Bake for about 20 minutes (or maybe a few minute more or less according to your oven) until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

As soon as the muffins were done the birthday girl was led into the kitchen.

She loved her birthday surprise.

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Off To L.A. Again

10/27/2019

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Last Friday, October 18, my mate and I were once again at the "One of Us" Columbus airport (see post from 4/9/2018, "What's So Funny At The Columbus Airport"),

...where a nice lady noticed me wielding my camera and kindly offered to snap a shot of Tom and I,

...soon after which we boarded our flight to Los Angeles to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and our two grand children.

The occasion for this visit was our daughter's 40th birthday, for which her hubby and kids had planned a party.

We had taken a 6:45 am Eastern Time Zone flight from Columbus, Ohio which delivered us to Los Angeles at 9:00 am Pacific Time.

From the airport we took a taxi to Manhattan Beach,

...to our daughter's house where we were greeted by our grand dogs Tyson and Pinky Poo,

...who were quite excited to see us.

Though Tom and I had had breakfast before we left Columbus, eight hours later it was only mid-morning in Los Angeles, so we decided to have breakfast again. (We have discovered that changing time zones always somehow ends up with an extra meal being thrown in. Which, by the way, I'm not complaining about).
We headed to our favorite LA breakfast eatery,

...Mandy's,

...the interior of which, we learned, is occasionally used as a movie setting.

Hopefully the movie folks eat there while shooting their scenes, as the food is fantastic, always made fresh and served up fast.

After our second breakfast Tom and I headed over to Ralph's,

...a supermarket located along the margin of what must be most beautiful, palm-laden parking lot on the planet.

After stocking up on baking supplies at Ralph's - my grand daughters had requested that we do some baking during our visit - we headed back to the house until it was time to pick up our grand daughters from their school,

...where every Friday is after-school ice cream day.

Then we walked home.

    As it turned out, this day was to be our lucky day as, since our daughter and son-in-law had commitments that would keep them out until later in the evening, Tom and I would be on over-time grandparental duty, something, I suppose, that can only be appreciated by those of use whose moments shared with our grandchildren are too few and too far between.
      And so we had a whole evening of the grand kids to ourselves.
       First on the agenda was, of course, homework to be done,

...with just a smidge of clowning around thrown in.

Then we headed to downtown Manhattan Beach,

...for our grand daughter's piano lesson,

...where her teacher rewarded her practicing with an early Halloween treat.

After the piano lesson the girls requested dinner at Denny's, after which they shared a dessert.

After dinner it was back home for what, when our children were young, Tom used to call the Long March: the post-dinner, pre-bedtime rituals, all of which must be followed until that blessed moment when the kids are in tucked into their beds for the night and the lights out.

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Our Justice System Is In Danger

10/26/2019

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It's true that many previously unthinkable things have happened since Donald Trump became president.

I say “became” as opposed to “was elected,” since Donald Trump wasn’t in truth elected.

Hillary Clinton is the one who was in truth elected according to the voice of the people, as it was she who won the election by 3 million votes.

    But due to an odd construct of our Constitution, the reason for which no one seems quite sure (ask any number of people and you’ll be given any number of reasons why the President of the United States is chosen by the Electoral College and not by the most votes received), Donald Trump, who did not by a long shot not receive the popular vote, is President while Hillary Clinton, who did, is not.
       And so the once-unthinkable outcome of someone like Donald Trump becoming President of this country has spawned numerous other unthinkable outcomes, some of the worst of them in recent weeks. Among them:
       America’s cruel and wanton abandonment of our allies the Syrian Kurds whose militia fought for five years with American troops against ISIS ;
       Attempts by Trump and his corrupt consiglieres to strong-arm the new Ukrainian President into manufacturing dirt on Trump’s political rival;
        The physical storming of the chambers of the House of Representatives by a dozen Trump loyalist Republican Senators in an effort to disrupt the House investigation into potentially impeachable offenses committed by Donald Trump.
         But, inured as many of us may have become to the unthinkable after two years of a Donald Trump Presidency, the headline that broke in yesterday’s news should have grabbed the attention of every American and shocked us into the danger that our country is in at this moment.

I’m talking about the news that Attorney General and Trump sycophant William Barr,

…has ordered the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of itself; specifically, of those of its members who worked on the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election,
also known as the Mueller Probe,

...after Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

So now Robert Mueller, who led the investigation that secured the convictions or guilty pleas of half a dozen Trump associates, is now himself under criminal investigation by William Barr's specially appointed prosecutor,

...John Durham.

Also under investigation in the Durham Probe is former FBI Director James Comey,

...former CIA Director James Brennan

...former National Security Director James R. Clapper,

...and anyone else who played role, or who Donald Trump perceives as having played a role, in the Russia investigation that uncovered the extent to which Russia worked to tilt our 2016 Presidential election in Trump's favor.
      However, although the Justice Department has begun it's criminal investigation of the Mueller Probe investigators, there's been no announcement of exactly what crime has been committed. Or even what crime is under suspicion of having been committed.
       Apparently Barr's investigators have so far been looking into whether the Russia investigators were guilty of political bias against Donald Trump. Which is not a crime. They are also looking into whether the CIA might have somehow tricked the FBI into opening the Russia investigation in the first place. Which is absurd. And William Barr himself went to Italy to try and run down a conspiracy theory flying around that the Italian government was somehow improperly involved in assisting the FBI with the Russia investigation. Which is ridiculous.
       The only thing that is clear about this darkly conceived criminal investigation of the Mueller probe investigators is that Donald Trump is using the American justice system as his personal weapon to use against those he considers his enemies.
         And that is beyond unthinkable. It is terrifying.

References
https://www.apnews.com/156aa3e8bcdf41f28594b4cd723086e8

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html

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Whatever Happened To Rudy Giuliani?

10/19/2019

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      Ah, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. What happened to you?
     Was there really a time, long ago and far away, when you were admired, even loved, not only by New Yorkers, but by the whole country?
      Do you remember those bad old days when New York City was a mess of graffitied walls and subways, trashy sidewalks, streets rife with crime petty and grievous and all sorts of other civic infractions and urban blights, and who could forget what a den of iniquity and ugliness Times Square was back then?

And then remember how you came along, you, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the new sheriff in town, and you lowered the boom bigtime, rounded up and locked the heels of urban offenders great and small, cleaned up the city, and set a new, higher standard of street and civic behavior? And how, by your tough love, a fresh, new quality was breathed into the environment and life of New York, not to mention the vast improvement in the tourist experience?
Times Square today.

And then came the horror of 9/11, the day on which two 1800-foot towers fell onto Manhattan, tons and tons of debris rained down, people ran for their lives, city blocks were demolished, and three thousand people died.

New York was traumatized, the country left in shock.

But remember how you were there, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, strong at the helm of leadership during that dark, terrifying time, perhaps your finest hour, so that you earned the title from a grateful nation as America’s Mayor?

Oh, Rudy, what happened? When in the world did you cross over to the dark side? When did greedy ambition for excessive wealth and excessive power begin to seep into your soul and poison whatever well of positive strength and heroism used to exist there? When did you turn from hero to absolute villain?
Because that’s what you are now, Rudy. You are an absolute villain. You are in league with Donald Trump, who is also an absolute villain, and now the two of you slither about intertwined, generating a slime trail of corruption that is damaging not only our American democracy but now, and perhaps even worse, the far more fragile fledgling democracy of Ukraine.
This Ukraine thing is bad. Really bad. Donald Trump is now on the road to impeachment for his proposition of a self-serving quid pro quo in a telephone call,

...to the young, newly elected neophyte President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

(That Trump held up military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure that country to find some 2016 election dirt on the Democrats was inadvertently confirmed,

...in an off-the-cuff remark by Trump’s dim-witted acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who is now desperately trying to take back what he publicly said about Trump holding back aid to Ukraine. But what’s said is said).

     But the thing is, Mr. Mayor, it’s looking more and more as if you, and not Donald Trump, are the cerebral engine behind the whole Ukraine thing. It was you, after all, who latched onto the idea that there was a computer server owned by the Democratic Party and hidden somewhere deep in Ukraine that would prove that the interference in our 2016 elections came from Ukraine and not Russia, and was – for some not-easily-understood reason – generated and fed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Even though it was Donald Trump who benefitted from said interference. Go figure.
      It was also apparently your idea to have Trump pressure President Zelensky to produce scandal on Joe Biden’s son, who was at one time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
      And then, Rudy, there are your two criminal business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have been charged with fraud in an arcane scheme that involved funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars through a bogus company to a former Texan Congressman, Pete Sessions, in exchange for Sessions pressuring the Trump administration to fire the American Ambassador to Ukraine,

...Marie Yovanovich,

…for speaking out against corrupt former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko.

      Wheels within wheels, webs within webs, lies within lies.
      It’s most recently come to light that with the full patronage of the President of the United States, you, Rudy Giuliani, have been running a shadow State Department, playing your own game of underground chess with our America ambassadors and emissaries to profit not your country, but yourself and your benefactor Donald Trump.
       But imagine, Rudy, if instead of slinking down the sleazy garden path to shame and ignominy, which is surely your ultimate destination, you’d chosen a different path after your honorable tour of service as Mayor of New York.
         What if, instead of falling prey to greedy ambition, setting your sights on the highest possible pinnacle of power, you’d instead pursued a more noble ambition commensurate with the good work you did as Mayor of New York City?
        How many cities across this country could have benefitted – could still benefit - from your talent and toughness in cleaning up cities and solving urban problems?
       What if, instead of setting your sights on becoming President or - as you’ve become – surrogate President of the United States, you had established a non-profit to assist mayors of cities in crisis with their urban problems?
      Quite frankly, some of your tough-love techniques could be the salvation of a city like Portland, Oregon, where law, order and civility have eroded under good intentions and administrative cluelessness.

Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, California, New Orleans, Louisiana…there are probably dozens of cities across America that could have gained from what you could have offered.
Or if not as an advisor to beleaguered cities, there are any other number of honorable pursuits in which you could have found your stride.

Consider the good Jimmy Carter has done since his term in public office.

   The name Rudy Giuliani could have garnered the same respect, admiration, and love as the name Jimmy Carter now does.
      But instead you’ll probably end up in prison in your ripe old age and your name will go down in history as synonymous with muck.
        Sigh. Ah, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. What happened to you?

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani

https://www.businessinsider.com/mick-mulvaney-confirms-trump-held-ukraine-aid-for-investigation-2019-10

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/768662050/how-former-ambassador-marie-yovanovitch-became-a-target-in-ukrainehttps://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/768662050/how-former-ambassador-marie-yovanovitch-became-a-target-in-ukraine

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Out Of This World, Part 1

Another New Life

Welcome To First Grade

Booed!

Irish Soda Bread And Other Hankerings

My Precious, Precious Palm Trees

A Big 4-0

Off To L.A. Again

Our Justice System Is In Danger

Whatever Happened To Rudy Giuliani?

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