  During the first of the Democratic debates this past Wednesday night my son Tommy and I were texting back and forth. At one point Tommy asked me if, as he hadn't been around for as many elections as I had, did I think this was an exceptionally strong batch of candidates? Did I ever. In truth, I can remember past elections - I'd say most past elections of my life - listening to candidates and thirsting for some solid ideas and concrete plans instead of the same round of slogans, inspirational pablum and promises offered without foundation upon which they'd be carried out. The Democratic debates of the past two nights are the first time I've ever heard so many candidates offering such specific policies and plans on all the big issues - health care, climate change, immigration, human rights, foreign relations - along with sounding so capable and potentially presidential.
 In fact, having watched both debates and listened to all twenty candidates, my problem now is that that I liked so many of them so much. By the end of the second debate last night I found myself wishing that we could have ten presidents. Or at least five. I'm kidding. My point is that, in choosing one, I'd hate to leave others behind.
 I loved that, when all the candidates started talking at once she broke it up, putting up her hands and saying, "Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table." I loved the urgency and the specifics in her plan for what she would do if elected on her first day in office about the humanitarian crisis at our southern border. But then how could one pass up Pete Buttigieg,  ...who was so brilliant, so on point on every issue, so articulate, so decent, so likeable, so unflappably calm, and who so rightly called out Republican hypocrisy when he said, "For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say that God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language again."
 I liked Kirsten Gillibrand's energy and ideas, 
 And I thought Tulsi Gabbard looked and sounded positively presidential and had a solid grasp on foreign and domestic policy.  It occurred to me that if Gabbard doesn't win the Democratic nomination for President, she'd make a kick-butt Secretary of State. And whoever wins the Democratic nomination, if they win the Presidency, should definitely grab Jay Inslee and put him in charge of a committee on climate change, since that's where his heart obviously lies.  And Andrew Yang, well, I don't see him as President, but he should definitely be the Secretary of something that requires brains and financial savvy. Maybe Secretary of Commerce. In any case, he's too smart not to utilize somewhere.  And if I didn't come away from the first Democratic debates knowing which person was my first choice, I did come away with feelings of optimism, excitement, and hope. And through my mind keeps running the line from a song from "West Side Story": The air is hummin' And something great is commin'. 
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 Here’s the plot line: The United States is on the brink of war with Iran. In fact, war is mere minutes away as U.S. bombers speed through the sky on their way to strike ground targets in that country. Flash back to several days previous: An American drone spy plane has been shot down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who claim they caught the drone flying in Iranian air space, though the Americans swear their drone was flying fairly and squarely over international air space. In the most secret American military circles there is conjecture – which is subsequently leaked to the public – that the American drone might possibly have nosed over the line into Iranian air space. It’s not completely clear.
 But the American drone was struck down anyway by an Iranian surface-to-air missile, this after some American officials had been publicly making fun of Iran’s military capabilities. Now the Iranians are celebrating and declaring a military victory over the United States and there is an expensive American hotel for the fishes at the bottom of the Gulf of Oman.  At this time the United State is a hyperkinetic nation that watches too much TV and internet and has subsequently elected as President a former reality TV star, ...a lying, impulsive megalomaniac with a crazy streak a mile long,  ...which is what his fan base loves about him.
 Caving to the urging of the war-mongers, the crazy President ignores the counsel of his generals for caution and blows off Congress, whose members are in serious deliberation over the incident, and sends a squadron of bombers on their way to Iran and, potentially, World War III. Flash back further to the back story. The fuse that is now being shortened by the second by the American bombers was lit a year earlier by the American President, whose experience with international diplomacy - as well as every other aspect of governance - was zip before he was elected to the most powerful position on the planet. A year earlier Iran and the United States had been more of less peacefully co-existing thanks to a nuclear arms treaty brokered by the crazy President’s predecessor.  The crazy President, however, smashed the treaty and pressed harsh economic sanctions on Iran that decimated the country’s economy and thrust the Iranian people into a state of hardship and misery.
 ...were of the persuasion that this plan of making Iran suffer – which the President named Maximum Pressure, as all political power plays need a slogan to gain traction with the public – would bring Iran to its knees while stirring up patriotism among Americans by giving them another enemy to hate. But why Iran? Well, why not Iran? However, Operation Maximum Pressure did not yield the desired outcome and a year after its inception the only result was that now Iranians hated Americans, and at it appeared that at least some of them were bent on laying some economic damage on the Americans by choking off the oil supply from the Middle East to the West. Subsequently, in the weeks before the drone incident mysterious mine explosions crippled half-a-dozen international oil tankers as they carried their cargo through the Gulf of Oman. It was a pretty sure bet that mines were planted on the tankers by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but Iran staunchly denied this, and so it wasn’t completely clear who mined the tankers, but it was making the crazy American President crazier and ramping up tensions and hostility between the United States and Iran. Then the unshootable American drone spy plane was shot down. Iran claimed responsibility for the strike and the Iranian populace cheered but behind the scenes intelligence leaked that the missile strike was in fact not ordered by the Iranian national leaders, who likely only wanted to harass the United States, not start a war, and who were furious at the Revolutionary Guard commander who made the decision to shoot down the American drone. The crazy American President, it turned out, also wasn’t so crazy that he wanted to have to deal with waging a real war either, especially since he’d been promising his adoring fan base all along that he’d make the U.S. so powerful and feared on the world stage that we’d never actually have to go to war anymore. But the warmongers got pushy and the President, who wasn’t really as tough as he always pretended to be, caved and now the planet was ten minutes away from the opening volleys of what could proliferate into an Armageddon of human suffering. Miraculously, the President’s ear is grabbed at the eleventh-and-a-half hour by a political newscaster who is the voice of the President’s base,  ....and who warns the President that if he pulls the U.S. into this war his base will balk and he’ll never be re-elected, no matter how crazy he acts going forward.
As it turns out, the President is less afraid of his war-mongering advisors than he is of losing the next election and, offering the inscrutable excuse that he just learned that up to 150 Iranians would likely die in the initial attack and he doesn't want to cause that kind of death over a $131 million drone, has the mission aborted and the bombers called back with ten minutes to spare. There is much relief in America and in Iran, too, especially among the ruling officials there. In America a bad war can cause a President to lose an election, but in Iran a bad war can cause a President to lose his head. Thus the President can now not only boast to his base that he has prevented a world war, but this made-for-TV President has presided over a dramatic, adrenalin-pumping move worthy of a made-for-TV docu-drama. Which this episode in American history may well be made into. Likely a very dark comedy. References: “Why Tanker Blasts in the Gulf of Oman Have Put the World on Edge,” David D. Kiripatrick, The New York Times, June 14, 2019 “Downing Drone was ‘Big Mistake’ by Iran, says U.S.,” Michael Shear and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, The New York Times, June 21, 2019 “Pompeo, Steadfast Hawk, Coaxes a Hesitant President on Iran,” Edward Wong and Michael Crowley, The New York Times, , June 23, 2019 “Swipe at U.S. Kindles Bravado in Tehran,” Farnaz Fassihi and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, June 23, 2019  Last weekend was Pride weekend in Columbus, Ohio, the main events being the Pride Festival on Friday evening and the Pride Parade on Saturday morning. Now, I'd never before been to an LGBTQ Pride event before, unless you count the time my daughter Theresa and I protested in front of the Columbus Catholic Diocese office for their having fired a lesbian high school teacher after she was outted by a cruel self-righteous parent.   And at our house we do represent every day.  But one of my friends mentioned that she and her husband were thinking about going to the Friday night Pride Festival in downtown Columbus, so I suggested that Tom and I join them and that we all go to Pride, as the weekend events are collectively referred to, together. So we did. We parked in the garage across the street from the park known as the Columbus Commons, where there was held that same night an outdoor performance of the Columbus Pops,  ...then we walked a couple of blocks to the entrance of the Pride Festival,  ...which was set up along and across the Scioto River in Bicentennial Park, along Civic Center Drive on the east side of the river,  ...along Washington Avenue in front of Columbus's Center for Science and Industry on the west side of the river, 
  ...all of which locations offered some splendid panoramas of downtown Columbus,     ...along with the splendid, rainbow-hued panorama of the festival itself.         There were many dozens of commercial booths,   ...and public service booths.      Tom got into a conversation with the friendly youngsters from the Louisville, Kentucky public relations booth.  Many businesses were also present, showing support for the LBGTQ community.      There were also food booths,   ...some with quite artfully-done displays.     We opted for some Caribbean food,  ...Tom ordering the BBQ Bites over vegetables and rice,  ...and the rest of us going with chicken over veggies and rice - huge portions -  ...which we ate on a cozy spot on a nearby wall,  After dinner we caught a couple of the musical shows.  There was a review of Tina Turner impersonators.    They were quite good and very entertaining.  We also watched a couple of the singers and dancers on the River Stage.     Then we strolled around,enjoying the beautiful June evening,   ...and at the same time proud to be part of this crowd, in this place,     ...where everyone was accepted,   ...and welcome to be themselves, 
 
 ...and one of the organizers of the Second Saturday Arts in the Alley, a summer monthly local artists festival taking place in downtown Gahanna on the second Saturdays of June, July, and August.  I ran into Christian as I was having a look around at the wares of the other vendors at this year's first Second Saturday Arts in the Alley and I affirmed that yes, it was true, I was in fact trying something visual this time. The thing is, I'd participated in last summer's Arts in the Alley events, which were held on the first Fridays of July , August, and September (see post from 7/14/2018, "The Lesson Of The Rubber Duck"),  ...selling my book. Hence I sold my book in July, 
 ...in September, 
 This year I figured that anybody in Gahanna, Ohio who wanted my book would surely already have it by now. And so I decided to take a fling at selling some of my photographs; specifically some of the photos that I took during two hikes with my hubby Tom, the first in 2013 and the second in 2015, along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
 ...and https://www.andlightenyourpack.com/).  I felt that most of the photos, vast landscapes, required a big print medium not fenced in by a frame. I chose ten photos and had them made into 12"x16" unframed canvases and I had four of the ten also blown up into 16"x20" canvases. In truth I would like to have made the canvases even bigger, but I feared that no one would buy a bigger canvas. In fact I feared that no one would buy the smaller canvases I'd had made, either. It turned out that my fears were not unfounded. But this I did not yet know as, with the the help of my loyal mate, I began preparing for my first public showing of my visual art, such as it was.
 Next came figuring out a display plan. Books need only a table for display.  But canvases need a stand of some sort. Now, I'd learned that there are all kinds of attractive stands that one can buy to display one's art.  But those display stands are expensive. And there was no guarantee that I'd sell enough photos - or any at all - to justify spending hundreds on a beautiful art display stand. And so I gerrymandered together several art display stands from the following objects: - a slatted room divider that I bought twenty-five years ago from a friend who needed to sell some of her things to make some money; - another room divider I bought from a thrift store then covered with brown contact paper; - a plastic thrift-store clothes rack upon which I hung a piece of peg board; - a re-purposed baby gate I once bought to keep our house bunny from getting out of the family room. (See post from 2/15/2016, "The House Bunny").  The result was mayhaps not beautiful, but I figured it would work okay, at least for a start.        I also made a few smaller 8"x10" prints that I framed.  On the afternoon of the first Second Saturday Arts in the Alley, June 8, Tom and I schlepped over to the alley and joined the other artists and artisans setting up at their designated spots.  While we were setting up we noticed that the wind was picking up. Tom worried that the wind might blow down my displays so he ran back home and procured some bags of fertilizer that he wrapped in plastic bags to hold down my displays.  The effect was in truth not the most esthetic. But I figured it was what it was, and at least I had a secure little art gallery that people might step into and look around without having the art fall on them.  I had decided to present my photos as a series that I called "The Pilgrim's Progress," and I wrote up a program explaining the provenance of the photos: The Pilgrim’s Progress For a thousand years pilgrims from all over the world have been walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, some as a spiritual journey, some as a penance, some as an adventure. People begin their pilgrimage from many points and there are many Camino routes through France, Spain, and Portugal, but all routes lead to Santiago, Spain and the great Cathedral of St. James, where the Camino ends and other journeys may begin. Thus the scallop shell, with its many rays ending in one point, is the symbol of the Camino. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is a photographic chronicle of two pilgrimages walked in 2013 and 2015 along the 497-mile Camino Frances, the ancient, most historical, and most-walked of the Camino routes. On display are a few of the hundreds of photographs in the series. I tagged each photo in the series with a number and a description. I priced the 12"x16" canvases at $50, the 16"x20" at $100,     ...and the the 8"x10" prints at $25. ( And I decided to set up a few books, too,after all).  To my initial delight, most of the people who passed my booth stopped for a look and many folks came into my tent and made the round of my little art gallery, asking questions about the pictures and the Camino. I received many compliments on my photographs. Some people stayed at my booth looking and talking for quite a while. Looking and talking, but, alas, not buying. I sold not one photo or book, except to a friend who came by and bought the smaller of the canvas prints of the colorful autumn field.  As for the rest, 
  ...loaded it into the car,  ...and put it all back into the basement   A couple of Sundays ago I was at the Book Loft of German Village, the beautiful book store in the heart of the historic German Village neighborhood in downtown Columbus,  ...where the books fill an amazing maze of 32 rooms and hallways,        ...and then spill out into the garden.     I was at the Book Loft on that particular Sunday, June 2, as one of the authors at the Authors at the Loft book event,  ...to which book lovers could come to meet Midwestern authors,          ...and, hopefully, our books.     The event was sponsored by the local book podcast yourbookmybook.com, organized by youbookmybook.com Media Production Coordinator Miguel Lopez,  ...and hosted by the friendly, accommodating, always smiling Book Loft Manager, Glen Welch.  Some of the authors had tables in the garden and some of us set up inside the store. I had a cozy spot inside at the top of the second-story landing in the heart of the fiction section,  ...where Tom, who'd come to help me, found himself a nice cubby.  Besides author book-signings and book give-aways, there were also yourbookmybook.com author live interview podcasts,  ...and some of the authors, myself among them, gave book talks,  ...though we gave our talks outside in the garden.  It was a good time, and the event was surely a labor of love all around,  ...or so if felt to us authors.    ...Continued from yesterday: On Saturday afternoon my mother suggested that she, Tom, and I go out for lunch at Applebee's. My mother seldom eats at Applebees, preferring rather to patronize the several small, locally-owned eateries in Seaford - she said she hadn't been to Applebees in years - but she thought it would be nice to go there for a change, a special occasion. So we did. 
 ...while my mom and I split a Bouron Street Chicken and Shrimp. Delish!  After we returned home my mom started reminiscing about her mother, how she did laundry for a living, how my mother when she was a little girl would walk to people's houses to pick up the dirty laundry, help her mother with the washing, and then on foot return the clean, ironed, and folded laundry to the customers. My mother told us that her mother charged twenty-five cents to wash, stretch, and iron a pair of curtains. She then talked a little about her mother's recipes, which reminded me that one of my mother's favorite comfort foods from her childhood was rice pudding - which was also one of my favorite comfort foods from my childhood. So I decided to make a batch of rice pudding. For anyone else who might have a hankering for rice pudding, here's my recipe: Patti's Rice Pudding: Ingredients: 5 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup rice A few shakes of cinnamon 2 Tablespoons raisins
 Instructions: 1. Combine all ingredients except the vanilla in a large sauce pan.  2. Cook on low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture just boils. (This takes a while. Maybe fifteen minutes. Be patient. The rice pudding can't be rushed.) 
 4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. 5. Enjoy! Delicious hot or cold. Or with some milk poured over it, as is my mom's preference.  The following morning, Sunday morning, after mass we went back to P.K.'s (see yesterday's post) for breakfast.   
 When I asked my mom who the orange and white cat was she said that oh, he was just one of the cats who liked to hang around. I have the impression that my mom's house is to all the neighborhood cats what our house was to all the neighborhood kids when I was growing up. That afternoon we received a call from one of my brothers that he and his wife were going to drive down from Pennsylvania and meet us for dinner. This time we went out to the Stargate, another of my mother's local dining venues of choice. 
 ...Tom had Broiled Tilapia,  ...my brother had the salad bar, my sister-in-law had an omelette with hash browns,  ...while I had a hankering for an omelette with a side of home fries smothered in onions and another side of pancakes.  Later that evening - as this was the last night of our visit, we'd leave Seaford the following morning - I once again besought my mom to let me take one more round of portraits.  Once again she was a good sport about it,  ...even if she did find it funny that anyone would still want her as a photographic model.  
 My mom and me. 
 The above is a picture of my mother, who will be 99 years old in a couple of weeks. On Thursday, May 23, Tom and I drove ten hours from Columbus, Ohio to Seaford, Delaware to visit her. It had been five months since I'd seen my mother, and in recent years every time we plan a visit I always wonder how my mother will look when I see her again after not having seen her for a few months. This time as soon as we arrived I thought she looked so pretty that I immediately made her sit in her kitchen for a few portraits:    She was a good sport about it, though she made her usual joke that I should watch that her old mug didn't break my lens. She was dressed for going out that evening, as the plan had been that when we arrived we'd all go out for dinner with my brother and his wife. However, shortly after we arrived a thunderstorm flashed down from the sky, complete with torrential rains and high winds, so we opted rather to have my brother and his wife bring over some fried chicken, upon which we feasted in my mother's dining room.  The next morning, Friday morning, the weather having cleared, Tom and I joined my mother in her daily routine of attending morning mass at her beautiful little parish church, Our Lady of Lourdes,    ...after which we went to my mom's favorite breakfast eatery, Pizza King, or P.K.'s as it's known among the locals, 
 ...where my mom goes for breakfast after mass so often with her church friends that no sooner had we sat down than the server hurried over to our table with the pot of decaf, my mother's breakfast beverage of choice, to fill my mom's cup. When we were ready to order the friendly server asked my mom, "your regular, Hon?", my mom's regular being the "one-one-one," which is one egg, one slice of bacon and one pancake for $3.99. Tom and I, however, felt we needed to look over the menu, of which I commenced snapping a few shots.  I noticed my mother was chuckling and I asked her what was funny. "I was just wondering if you take pictures of the toilets when you use the bathrooms." I informed her that as a matter of fact I have been known to snap a shot of a toilet if I came a cross a particularly distinctive one, such as this Toto Washlet I encountered in a mall bathroom in Honolulu. 
 After breakfast we returned home and I then set about taking pictures of my mother's house,  ...which for me somehow never loses it's charm.        The table used for my mother's church group, which meets at her house every week.  The front yard,   ...and back yard.   Next, camera in hand, I headed off my mother's three cats:
 ...who likes to hide, 
 I also met a neighborhood cat, 
 I got the idea of making a blueberry pie, so my mom and I drove over to Walmart to buy the berries and, of course, some ice cream. This time when I raised my camera for a shot my mother saluted me,  ...even though she's the former U.S. Army officer. Here are some pictures of her taken during World War II, during which she was an Army nurse,  ...this one at the Army hospital in Puerto Rico where she was stationed during the war. 
   Later in the afternoon we watched a couple of re-runs of my mom's favorite show, M.A.S.H, .which, frankly, I had never seen, not being much of a TV person back in the era of M.A.S.H. or even now,  ...still, I thought this show was pretty witty and I can understand why it was so popular, something I can't understand regarding many of the TV shows past and present that I've briefly perused. When dinnertime rolled around we headed over to another of my mom's favorite local restaurants, the Golden Eagle,  
 Then we went home and desserted on blueberry pie.  To be continued...
 This morning I was listening to Joel Riley, early morning host of Columbus radio station 610 WTVN when he broke the news story of the launching of a new KFC product: chicken skins without the chicken. Apparently one can now buy a bag of chicken skins. This is obviously a development born of the generally-accepted narrative that what people love about Kentucky Fried Chicken is the chicken skin; that we in fact buy the chicken so that we can peel off the skin and gobble it down. But then we're left to deal with the naked chicken, which holds far less charm without its crispy, tasty, covering. Which creates the perennial KFC paradox: The chicken derives its worth from the skin, but the skin is 'way yummier than the chicken. Perhaps some South Park afficionados recall the episode a few years ago in which one of the kids’ mothers buys a bucket of KFC for her son and his friends to share. But one of the boys, the ever-opprobrious Cartman, 
 Cartman subsequently believes that he's become a ghost, having died from eating all the chicken skins. Anyway, the point is that everybody knows the skin is the best part. I suppose it's amazing that no one came up with the idea of chickenless skin sooner. Perhaps even more amazing to us Americans is that this idea was not born here in our country, the origin of Kentucky Fried Chicken as well as many of the other addictive links in the unhealthy food chain. The chickenless skin concept actually rose up in Indonesia,  ...where it is currently available exclusively at six KFC locations throughout that country, specifically in Cideng, MT Haryono, Kelapa Gading, Salemba, Kemang and Kalimalang.  Apparently the item has been selling out faster than the stores can produce it. So what do you think of that, America? References:
https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/kfc-fried-chicken-skin http://thesource.com/2019/05/30/kfc-indonesia-new-fried-chicken-skin/ |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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