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...Continued from yesterday: On Sunday morning My mother, Tom, and I went to the 8:30 mass at my mom's church in Seaford, Our Lady of Lourdes, where a lovely May altar had been set up outside the church.  The altar inside Our Lady of Lourdes church.  Laura, one of my mother's home helpers, was at the service and afterwards came over for a chat, and a photo op.  After church my mom, Tom, and I headed over to Pizza King, my mom's usual Sunday morning breakfast venue (see yesterday's post), where my mom declared that if I was going to keep taking her picture then she was going to start hamming it up,  ...and where the waitress arrived at our table with my mom's standard cup of decaf before we even sat down. "On Sunday morning we always know she's coming so we always save her a booth," our waitress explained. I guess there are some things to be said for small-town living. The food was yummy: My mom ordered her usual, "one, one, and one" (except that on the bacon it looks like they threw in two),  ...and I ordered my usual, sunny side up eggs with potatoes and toast.  Tom went with the blueberry pancakes, which were huge and deliciously fluffy.  Soon after breakfast we headed to my brother's beach house in Bethany Beach, about an hour form Seaford along the Delaware coast. When we arrived at my brother's house we were greeted by my niece's puppy Macy, who'd found herself a cozy spot in the sandy front yard.  After spending some time catching up with family members,    
 ...which we all enjoyed.  My sister-in-law, Tom, and I went out for a walk to the beach.     ...where the Atlantic coastline was all shades of grey on this chilly, overcast day,  ..such a different color scheme from what we'd recently seen along the Pacific coastlines in Los Angeles,  ...and Hawaii,   ...but still beautiful in its own grey way.   After our walk we said our good-byes then headed back to Seaford. For dinner we opted to return to Pizza King as it was the restaurant closest to my mother's house,  ...the price is right,  ...and the food is good.
 ...Tom had the turkey dinner,  ...and I ordered the cheese steak, which was as close to a Philly Cheese Steak as I've had outside of Philly (except that I ordered mushrooms on my cheese steak. A real Philly Cheese Steak doesn't have mushrooms).  As everyone was in the mood for dessert (like when are we not?), my mom and Tom ordered the blueberry pie,  ..and I had my favorite of all favorites, coconut cream pie.
 After dinner we did a little shopping at Walmart.  Then we returned home from our long, busy day, all of us old enough to appreciate what a gift a long, busy day is.
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Over this past Memorial Day weekend Tom and I drove from Columbus, Ohio, to Seaford, Delaware, to visit my mother, who will turn 97 years old in June. Though I talk to my mom on a regular basis, it had been almost a year since I'd last seen her and I was wondering how she would look, how she would be, now, ...compared to two years ago,  ...or one year ago. 
 ...with a bowl of fruit salad that she'd made for us, an assortment of cookies and sweets, and a refrigerator full of snacks and drinks. Also there to greet us were my mom's three cats, strays she's adopted, Blacky,  ...Hidey, so named because he likes to hide,  ...and Sylvester, a pretty black and white ball of fur who refused to sit still for a picture. As usual, I was amazed at how well my mom was doing, how good she looked, and how cheerful she was. Though in truth she's always been a pretty cheerful lady.  I'd heard from siblings who live closer to my mom than I do that she was refusing to use her walker. But then I saw for myself that she in fact was using her walker...to store things in and hang things on.  "I'm not going to use that old thing," said my mom of her walker, "it makes me feel like an old lady and I don't want to feel like an old lady!" Can't argue with that. Especially when we woke up the following morning to find that my mom, looking lovely,  ...had fixed us a beautiful breakfast of cheese omelettes, bagels, fruit salad, and sticky buns.  After breakfast my mom pulled out a box of chocolates. Now, candy immediately after breakfast is more than even I, the Sugar Queen, can handle. Tom likewise declined. My mom, however, dug in. "I really shouldn't eat so much chocolate," she said. "No, Mom," said I, "you should keep eating exactly what you're eating and doing exactly what you're doing."  It occurred to me that maybe we all should start eating chocolate after breakfast. In truth, besides the benefits of chocolate, my mother has the benefit of two wonderful ladies who are her tag-team of in-home helpers: her dear friend Fran, 
 Every morning either Fran or Laura swings by my mom's house and takes her to Mass. Afterwards they go for breakfast at McDonald's with my mom's church group, except on Sundays when they go after church to breakfast at a local restaurant called Pizza King, where one can get a great breakfast, and lots of other dishes besides pizza. Go figure.  After breakfast Fran or Laura generally drive my mom to doctor's appointments, shopping trips, or to run whatever errands need to be run. Then they head home where the ladies take care of whatever house work needs to be done, usually finding time to fit in a game or two of Scrabble with my mom. My mom's helpers generally leave by mid-afternoon and she's good for the rest of the day and evening, though friends, neighbors, and my brother and his wife often stop by to visit. After breakfast and chocolates my mom showed me some pictures from the Christmas party she hosted last December, of the yummy-looking food,    ...and my brother Michael with five of his ten kids.   Then I spent some wandering around my mother's house, looking at things,     
 ...and this local news article from a couple of years ago. 
 ...and my mother explained that this is for the weekly meetings of her Legion of Mary group who, since they lost their former meeting site, now hold their meetings at her house.  Later that afternoon my mother saw her next-door neighbor, one of her many good neighbors who watch out for her, out in his back yard, so she walked over to his yard and invited him and his cute poochie to come over for a visit since Tom and I were there.   At dinner time we we went to eat at my mom's favorite restaurant, the Stargate Diner, a homey place,     ...family owned, 
 ...and the biggest portions of the best food.
 ...while Tom had the sea trout, 
 Our meals were ginormous, and came with soup or the salad bar as well. During dinner the daughter of the owner walked around the restaurant talking to the guests. "Romaine, why did they seat you here?" she asked my mother, who is one of the regulars, "I was looking for you in the other room." After our delicious and pleasant dinner at the Stargate, we came home and Tom and I went for a walk around my mother's neighbor- hood.   When we got back my mom had the desserts ready and waiting.  To be continued...
Earlier today, as Tom and I sat whiling away the time, stopped in the Memorial Day traffic headed west on Interstate 70 on our way back home to Columbus, Ohio from a visit to my mother in Seaford, Delaware, stopped in the Memorial Day traffic headed west on Interstate 70 on our way back home to Columbus, Ohio from a visit to my mother in Seaford, Delaware,  …I ruminated aloud, mostly just to make conversation: “So who exactly do we honor on Memorial Day? All Americans who’ve served in the military who’ve died? Or just the ones who’ve died in wars? Or do we honor all war veterans living and dead? – which I guess we do anyway on Veterans Day, when we honor all veterans, living and dead, whether or not they’ve fought in a war. What do you think?” Tom, who tends to know a lot about American history, military history, and many things in general,  …replied that the celebration of Memorial Day – originally called Decoration Day – began soon after the Civil War as a remembrance of that war’s dead, though the North and South at first celebrated on different dates. Eventually, Tom continued, the name of the holiday changed as well as the date, which was switched about 30 or 40 years ago* from the fixed date of May 30 to the last Monday in May in order to give us a three-day weekend. By then, according to Tom, the original intent of the holiday had likewise evolved into a more inclusive commemoration. “This used to be a day commemorating those who died in the Civil War,” he said, “but nowadays Memorial Day has become a day to remember not only members of the American military who’ve died in wars, but all veterans, living and dead, as well as anyone, veteran or not, who’s died that we wish to memorialize.” Then Tom added, “But I think the real purpose of Memorial Day should be to recall all the Americans who’ve died in wars. If once a year we as a nation looked at the number of American lives lost in wars it might serve as a cautionary against rushing into future wars.” And I thought, well, that would be good, and maybe it might. In a different world. *** For what it's worth, I looked up the number of American service members who have died in all the wars, good and bad, that we've fought in the past 241 years since the birth of our country. Over 1.1 million Americans have died in wars. Over 500,000 of these died during The Civil War. Of those 500,000, most died from disease and infections. * I looked it up: Memorial day was switched from May 30 to the last Monday in May in1971. Happy Memorial Day.  References:
1.http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/many-americans-died-u-s-wars/ 2.https://www.google.com/search?q=what+did+most+soldiers+die+of+in+civil+war&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting was also attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter. Erick Prince, the former founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 – nine days before Trump’s inauguration – in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The above is not a passage from a novel. The words were not lifted from a spy thriller of intrigue and high treason about the infiltration of the American government at the highest level by an alliance of powerful individuals secretly in league with a hostile foreign power.
 ...not a fictional son-in-law of a fictional President who, motivated by a lust for self-enrichment and power, attempts to set up a secret channel of communications between himself and Moscow.  A meeting between an advisor to the President and an agent of a brutal Russian dictator on an island in the Indian Ocean; a clandestine plot to set up a liaison between an American and a “Russian contact” in a mysterious third foreign country – such treachery is not the brainchild of some story-writer’s imagination. No, the above is from the front-page news story of yesterday’s Washington Post.  In normal times such a news story would have shocked and rocked our country and the world, would have made the heart of every American race to think that the President’s closest advisor, the husband of the President’s daughter, was at the head of a secret conspiracy of White House insiders in collusion with a foreign power opposed to our national interests and the values upon which our nation was founded. In normal times a Jared Kushner would have by now been escorted by Federal officers from his luxury high-rise office in handcuffs. In normal times this sort of thing would have been news. It would have been treason of momentous proportions. It would have been one for the history books. But in these times? Eh. Jared Kushner’s collaboration with Russian operatives is merely the outrage du jour – for half the country. The other half, if they even pay attention, will ask with a yawn and a shrug, “So what if he wants to talk to the Russians?” The Justice Department won’t make a move against Kushner because the Attorney General has also been in secret communication with the Russians, except that’s likewise no secret anymore and apparently no big deal, either. Congress won’t take any action against Jared Kushner because both The House and The Senate are ruled by Republican apparatchiks, none of whom dare think or act for themselves and are tied to following their leader down the garden path to Hell if required of them.   *Flying a flag upside down means “Help. We are in dire trouble.”
Reference: “Russia diplomat: Kushner sought secret channel,” by Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous and Greg Miller, The Washington Post, May 27, 2017, page 1. Good Lord, has there ever been a more embarrassing time to be an American? That overseas tour that was supposed to be Donald Trump’s big opportunity to appear Presidential before the world? Fail. That video of him shoving aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro and planting himself front and center, his extra-wide girth displacing everyone else in the group ? Then straightening his lapels and striking that ridiculously pompous Louis the Sixteenth pose?  Cringe worthy. Did I say Louis the Sixteenth?
  
 Here, if you haven’t already seen the video of Donald Trump pushing the Prime Minister, look at it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTOlNDMTvg You can’t unsee that. Look at the European dignitaries around him – are they chuckling? Sigh. Well, if they weren’t then, they are now. Everybody is. Good Lord. But that video-recorded debacle isn’t even the biggest or worst embarrassment perpetrated upon our country by our … choke…gag… President. Far worse was Donald Trump’s intelligence spill a few weeks back during his meeting – inappropriate in and of itself – with a couple of high-ranking Russian foreign ministers, among them Sergey Kislyak, who it appears already has his tentacles reaching a little too deeply into the White House and the Trump dynasty.  But couldn’t that scene between Trump and Putin’s people likewise have come straight out of a “Naked Gun” episode? Say, “Frank Drebin meets the Russians?” Can’t you see it? Detective Drebin– played by Donald Trump, who does the part in real life better than Leslie Nielsen did on screen - has been entrusted by U.S. intelligence with some sensitive top secret information, but while trying to show off and one-up his adversaries he accidentally blabs what he was supposed to be protecting to the people he was supposed to be protecting it from.
 Except in real life. In this case Donald Trump’s behavior was worse than embarrassing ; his big careless mouth may have blown the cover of an Israeli operative working deep in ISIS territory, jeopardizing not only the life of the operative but our trust relationship with an important ally. And yet in terms of a recent national embarrassments, perhaps the pièce de résistance was the announcement made last week by infuriated British officials after the terrorist bombing in Manchester that the United Kingdom would no longer share intelligence with the United States after classified photographs and police evidence on suspects was leaked by from the American intelligence community to the press. How mortifying for us as a nation that our intelligence agencies, once considered the gold standard, have been devalued to junk-bond status. How sad for us to suffer such a down grade in world standing that we, who once sat at the head of the table no longer even deserve a place at the table as far as at least one of our closest allies is concerned. And though Donald Trump has denounced the leak of the Manchester bombing evidence by American agents and has promised to find and punish the leakers, the responsibility for that offense lies squarely at his own feet. The White House has been leaking like a sieve since the beginning of the Trump administration, Trump himself being a prime offender.  If there’s no responsibility, no competence, no discretion and very little maturity, even, at the top, there will a lack of those qualities within the ranks below. Donald Trump’s staff and subordinates can’t be trusted to be discreet, closed-mouthed and protective of their President because they harbor no respect for, no admiration or fondness of, and therefore no loyalty to him. Or, now it seems, to their own mission under his presidency.
And, unfortunately for us Americans, when a country is being governed by a low comedy dog-and-pony act, the citizens who elected the Ring Master will also end up looking like clowns. I suppose It's no wonder we love our monster movies, as we're currently loving "Alien Covenant," the most recent blockbuster in the saga of a ruthless, faceless, soulless, but exceptionally opportunistic and seemingly inexterminable alien,  ...who lurks in its dark habitat just waiting to pounce upon, terrorize and destroy humanity, even though it was humans who haplessly gave it ascendancy through our own folly, naivete, and greed.  No wonder we find this particular monster so engaging. But while "Alien Covenant" continues to rule number one at box offices nationwide, another monster movie has, sadly, been languishing under the radar, at least here in Columbus, Ohio.
 ...which shows the artiest, most out-there, weirdest movies that come to Columbus, among which "Colossal" probably is,  ...yet in a weirdly wonderful way. Anyway, the movie is a monster movie/dark comedy starring Anne Hathaway,  ...in the kind of role she could probably do in her sleep. She plays a young woman named Gloria who has lost herself in a sea of drinking and partying, has been fired from her job in New York and dropped by her boyfriend, who kicks her out of the apartment they shared together.
 ...Gloria has no option but to move back to her small, down-on-its-luck Midwestern home town and live in the vacant house left to her by her parents. She meets up with Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a local slacker she went to school with who offers her a job in the run-down bar he inherited, which facilitates the continuation of her drink-all-night-sleep-all-day lifestyle. 
 Gloria eventually becomes aware that the monster has the same nervous tics as she does,  ...and stomps around Seoul every night at the same time as she's stumbling home every morning in a drunken haze. The rest of the movie is a wildly entertaining metaphor for...well...that's what one could stay up all night discussing: The destructive manifestation of repressed hurt, fear, emotional trauma, rage, jealousy, and/or self-loathing?  The Freudian theory that one must uncover the origins of one's dysfunction before one can deal with one's dysfunction? 
 Monsters can beget monsters can beget monsters can beget monsters; so conquering your own monster may well involve conquering a correlative monster? 
 ...came up with what I thought was a brilliant deduction about the movie: That Seoul was chosen as the setting because this is a city that lives with the danger that two foreign powers with destructive capabilities could play out their hostilities on South Korea's soil.
An awesome observation, say I. As I write this "Colossal" is still playing in one lone theater at the Gateway Film Center. If anybody goes to see it let me know. We can talk about it afterwards. Now the sun wants to rise as brightly as if nothing terrible had happened during the night. 
 But the sun shines equally on everyone.       Now I see well, why with such dark flames in many glances you flash upon me O Eyes: as if in one look to draw all your strength together. 
 We would gladly stay with you! 
 The day is fine, don't be dismayed, They have just gone for a long walk. 
 Don't be dismayed, the day is fine, they have simply made a journey to yonder heights.  They have just gone out ahead of us, and will not be thinking of coming home.  They rest as if in their mother's house: frightened by no storm, sheltered by the Hand of God. 
  - From Songs on the Death of Children by Friedrich Rückert
Last Friday night Tom and I went with a couple of friends to see "Alien Covenant," the latest episode in the long-running "Alien" saga, which, by the way, is neither as scary nor as metaphysical as the movie poster would seem to suggest, still it was a pretty good effort in both scariness and metaphysicality, and I enjoyed the movie well enough,  ...not the least reason being that I saw it at the Marcus Pickerington Cinema, where we were able to snag the Friday $5 Early-Bird Senior Special, and sit in the amazing DreamLounger reclining seats  ...which were so sublimely comfy that it was practically worth the five bucks just to be able to spend a couple of hours sitting back and taking a load off.    As for "Alien Covenant," I think I would have liked it more had I been more invested in the on-going story; but alas, this was the first of the "Alien" movies I'd seen. Still, "Alien" being kind of a late 20th Century icon, I of course knew something about it, and could certainly recognize its hallmark monster well enough to figure out about halfway through the film that "Alien Covenant" is meant to be a prequel to the original "Alien,"  ...or mayhaps a prequel to one of a number of subsequent prequels and sequels that might come to fruition before the franchise has run its lucrative course. Of course, had I read a review of "Alien Covenant" before going to see it I would have found out in advance that this film was a prequel; but it was kind of thrilling to have figured it out on my own. My son Tommy, an "Alien" saga fan who also was likewise intending to see this latest installment informed me when I talked to him after seeing the film that that "Alien Covenant" is not only a prequel to "Alien," but the sequel to the first prequel, which was the 2012 movie "Prometheus."  so I did not know that. In any case, "Alien Covenant" had an involved enough story line that afterwards I felt the need to have a group recap of the film, and we all felt the need for some food, so afterwards we went to the Greek Star, a nearby Pickerington restaurant,  ...with a cute, cozy interior,   
 ...though the next time I go to this place I'm going to just order a big basket of the Greek Feta Fries, crispy seasoned fries smothered in feta cheese and gyro sauce that were beyond amazing,  ...and upon which we all feasted while we deconstructed the theme, plot points, story arc, and action sequences of the film, well, actually we just talked about the movie.  But we all agreed that the script writers didn't spell everything out, but left some things for the audience to figure out and interpret for ourselves, which we enjoyed doing. Anyway, after seeing "Alien Covenant" I felt the desire to see all the episodes of the "Alien" epic so as to find out what preceded this installment and where it's all headed to. So the following night, Saturday night, I decided to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start - sorry I couldn't resist), with the original 1979 movie, of which I snagged a copy,  ...watched, and concluded was a better movie than the one I'd seen the previous night, and which, I'm guessing, is probably the best of the bunch. But then, of course, "Alien" had the advantage of being its own story and the simplicity of its plot line, which was in essence a variation of cat-and-mouse thriller, sort of a sci-fi intersection of Agatha Christie's "And then There Were None," 
 ...and "Snakes On A Plane," whose writer must surely have drawn at least a whiff of inspiration form "Alien." 
 ..in which she looked just a little more fetching fending off the monster in her undies,  ...than did Katherine Waterston fending off the monster in her undies in "Alien Covenant,"  ...though it can be said of Katherine Waterston that she does in this film bear a much greater resemblance to her frail-looking-but-courageous-and resourceful-in-the-face-of-terror predecessor Audrey Hepburn, who played the beleaguered heroine of "Wait Until Dark,"  ...which is a good thing.
But I'm only saying, in the next sequel-prequel they better figure out a way to stick Sigourney Weaver in somewhere. (Maybe she could play her own veteran space-traveler mom? What do you think?) ...Continued from yesterday:  Rachel and Jason's wedding reception was held at the Emerald Event Center, which was conveniently located just down a hallway from the lobby of our hotel, the Residence Inn.  The reception began with a 6 pm cocktail hour,  ...where we enjoyed the most delicious appetizers, savory lamb chops,  ...and Bloody Mary shrimp cocktails,  ..served outside on the patio,    ...and inside in the entrance hall      The entrance hall was set up with messages of love from Rachel and Jason to each other,     ...photographs of of the wedding days of the newlyweds' parents and grandparents,     ...and a table at which guests could share wedding day thoughts and wishes for the bride and groom placed in boxes to be opened on future anniversaries.  
 Stacey and Audrey, sisters of the groom.   Then the doors of the reception hall opened,   
           
 Ken and Mary Jane, parents of the groom.  The seats were place-set with shots of moonshine.
 There was also a vegetarian option - I'm guessing indicated by a green lid? When all the guests were seated the celebration began with the entrance of the wedding party followed by Jason and Rachel,    ...and their first dance as husband and wife.  Next came the cutting of the cake,   ...followed by wonderfully funny, touching speeches by the father of the groom, 
 
Then began the feasting, starting with a salad,  ...followed by a choice of salmon, which Tom had and pronounced delicious,  ..or the smothered-in-mushrooms filet mignon, which I had, that was fork-tender juicy and soooo tasty! Especially good was the side of potatoes, a sort of hashbrown-mashed potato fusion - so good!  The vegetarian option was a pesto pasta, which I have on the good authority of my vegetarian sources was also excellent.  After the feasting began the dancing, starting with the father-daughter dance,  ...followed by the mother-son dance, 
   ...taking a break for the delicious desserts,    
    
  ...to celebrate two beautiful young people whose happily ever after was just beginning.   ...Continued from yesterday:  The following morning, the day of the wedding, started off with the hotel's great buffet breakfast which people ate sitting here, there, and everywhere, all around the lobby,    ...including at the color-changing bar (see yesterday's post),   After breakfast some of the out-of-town family members went to visit Tom's 98-year-old dad in his assisted living facility, which was not far from the hotel, .so that the family could share with him some of the joy of the day.  Charlie Liszkay 
 ...as were the groom and his men, 
 Mary Jane, mother of the groom, ready for the wedding.  The wedding took place at beautiful St. Christopher Church.         But the beauty of the setting could not compare to the beauty of the joy that radiated from the faces of the Rachel and Jason's parents,   
     After the wedding the guests and the wedding party gathered outside the church, Alyssa, sister of the bride and Maid of Honor, Michael, brother of the bride, and Lisa, mother of the bride,  ...Randy, brother of the groom, looking every inch the best man,  ...to wait for the grand arrival of the happy newly weds.  ...where the sweetness of the moment was emphasized by the arrival of a cupcake truck,  ...which handed out the most delicious cupcakes to the wedding guests, though I had to take the deliciousness of the cupcakes at the word of the other guests, as I, along with Tom, Claire, Tommy and Emily had to hurry back to the hotel after the wedding, to set up a snack for out-of-town family hosted by the parents of the groom.   This little après-wedding get-togther was another nice opportunity for family to re-connect,      ...and was greatly enjoyed,  ...by the relatives of all ages.   After the snack there was time to relax for a bit out on the patio.  Then it was time to get ready for the reception. Nothing like the joy of a wedding to put love in the air.  ...To be continued
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"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY Archives
April 2025
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