If Animals Could Vote

What did people argue about before this election season heated up? Oh, I remember now--it's always election season. This very moment, some folks are already arguing about 2016: Will Hillary run? What about Jeb Bush? And don't forget Rubio! It's truly a never-ending conversation, turning our collective brains to mush. Imagine instead a world where other subjects dominated the news. Like what if people explored inter-species communication, a topic that gets far too little attention if you ask me. I believe it's all around us; take my cat Lurch, an animal lacking the gift of speech but leaving no doubt as to what he wants and when he wants it.

When Lurch first arrived I worried that he would get stuck outside in all sorts of bad weather, since he's an outdoors kind of guy and we have no cat door. His previous home was a group house inhabited by five college students with zillions of friends dropping by at all hours; the doors were forever opening and closing and Lurch could come and go easily. But here it's just me and Mitch, and sometimes just me, and actually we don't have many drop-ins, this being Maine. What would happen?

Lurch handles it. Like any cat, when he wants out he howls at the particular door of his choosing. But when he wants in it is often hours later, maybe dark and rainy, or snowing and windy. Howling won't work. So what he does is get a good running start, get airborne and and literally hurl his almost-14-pound body at the door. The first time I heard this thunderous noise I thought someone was trying to break in, and rushed to see what the commotion was. Turns out it was someone trying to break in; it was Lurch.

When he's hungry he sits at the refrigerator; for treats, it's the pantry door. When he wants fresh water he stares at the water bowl. Just in from the storm all wet and soggy, he camps out at the closet where we keep the hot tub towels. In the morning, thinking I have slept quite enough and it's time for breakfast, he jumps on my head and meows in my ear. I know--your cat does all those things too. But what about this: During last night's presidential debate, Lurch parked his considerable self right down on the remote, turning off the TV in the middle of an especially obnoxious Obama tirade. Let's face it: He is one smart kitty.

In This Corner...

You sort of wished they would just duke it out, and at one point it looked like it might happen, with the two of them circling around one another, talking through one another, and Candy the referee trying to get them to calm down and go back to their corners. Now that would have been some debate! But instead, it was the same old boring pablum and evasions that we have heard for the last year. The most amazing thing is how neither one answered any of the questions put to them. It went sort of like this:

Q. Being as specific as possible, and using examples from your past experience, please tell us exactly how you would create new jobs for those people who are unemployed today.

President Obama: My mother raised two kids and she had a job. My grandmother was smart as a whip, and she had a job too, and she knew Lily Ledbetter. Governor Romney shot down Lily Ledbetter. He doesn't want you to have jobs, he just wants to cut taxes for the rich and take away your contraception. You will have jobs too, all of you, if you vote for me and let me do what I want, instead of having to fight the Republicans in Congress all the time.

Governor Romney: I went to the Olympics and made it better. I know how to make jobs. This administration made less jobs than anyone since Harry Truman. I have a five-point plan, and I was a pastor in my church for ten years. Did I mention I was Governor of Massachusetts? And I don't want to take away your contraception, I just want to cut our deficit and I know how to do that. You know, I did it for the Olympics and I can do it again. Obama made gas prices double!

I was an undecided voter before tonight, but now I'm 100% clear on who can take America into the future with style, smarts and savvy: On election day, I'm writing in Candy Crowley.

What's So Great About Diversity?

I lived in Washington, D.C. for 30 years before moving to Maine more than three years ago.  D.C. is nothing if not diverse. Some of that diversity gives the city its wonderful restaurants serving ethnic delicacies, but you can only eat in them if you have the nerve because you might get mugged on the way there. There are also beautiful old homes in "changing neighborhoods" where you can still find a bargain if you're willing to fix it up, but you can only do that if you have the nerve because you might get murdered after you move in. (That happened to my friends Bruce and Bonnie Glover.)

While we lived there, our son attended public high school. He was in the minority, along with roughly 320 other white students in a class of 1,500; his classmates were predominantly African American, followed by Asians and Hispanics. Zack had one very close Asian friend, one very close black friend, and the rest of his usual gang were all white kids. The school day began with a walk through a metal security detector to weed out the knives, guns and drugs from student backpacks. Metropolitan Police patrolled the halls. All the white kids congregated together, ate lunch together, and in fact sort of attended their own school within a school, since honors classes based on test scores effectively segregated the student body.

During the three years my son was at Woodrow Wilson High, I attended scores of meetings, plays, concerts, science fairs and book drives. I sold cupcakes at carnivals and helped out with new student orientation. During all that time I was approached by one black parent. She was great, and we actually became friends and kept in touch for a few years, even on Facebook. But being the only white face on her news feed, I felt like an intruder and ultimately "un-friended" her.

Maine is not diverse at all. I guess it's too cold to attract many folks used to warmer climates. Whatever the reason,  it's pretty white up here. But there's never any dead bodies found in the alleys every morning, which I think is worth missing out on all those yummy ethnic restaurants. Politicians talk about diversity like it's a walk in the park, but until Americans actually choose to befriend people of other colors and nationalities, all the laws in the world won't get everyone to play nice.

How Annoying: Old Friends Getting Old

The other day I had a longish phone conversation catching up with an old friend--in fact, my oldest friend. Our mothers were pals long before we were born and so Carol, a few years older than me, was around from the get-go. Until I was nine our families lived with just one house between us, still it felt like they were right next door. After that we all upgraded, and our new house was one street over from theirs in a nicer town. The two families felt like one, despite ours being Jewish and theirs Italian Catholic; Carol's younger brother Kenny and I certainly fought like siblings. Still, all was simpatico.

Carol was the perfect, fairy tale "big sister" I wished I had. She was beautiful and fun, with a winning personality and an endearing magnetism about her. She grew up to be a professional dancer, eventually becoming one of the famous June Taylor Dancers of long ago that I watched on TV's Jackie Gleason Show each week. We have kept in touch, and a few times we have visited despite living far apart all of our adult lives.

Circa 1951: Carol at left in pink, Kenny and me front row center.

About that phone conversation. We squandered it talking about our various ailments, bouncing back and forth between her skin cancer and my skin cancer, her torn rotator cuff and physical therapy and my arthritis and possible hip replacement.  Then we moved on to the relative merits of taking turmeric in powder form versus capsules, and whether or not alternative medicine was better than more traditional treatments. Finally after about 30 minutes of this, I noted that we had spent the whole time talking about how sick we are, and what fun is that? She laughed, I laughed, and we changed the subject--we started talking about her 92-year-old mother's back pain and her almost-as-old aunt's upcoming heart valve surgery. (We had to talk about Carol's family, since most of mine is dead already.)

Despite the focus on our obvious decline--these are after all our declining years--we hung up laughing, and our conversation was a tonic like few others available; certainly none that come in a bottle. Carol will turn 70 in a few days and I can assure you she is definitely the best-looking, funniest and most youthful 70-year-old woman you will ever meet. The bottom line: As long as you're on this side of the grass, you've still got a shot at happiness.

Film Review: THE MASTER

One good reason to see the movie "The Master" is because it feels so good when it stops. Really, I was never so happy to see anything as that final black screen. As I joyously escaped the darkness and ran out to carpe what little remained of the diem, I witnessed another just-sprung patron in the lobby irately demanding a refund because the film was "a load of hogwash and a piece of crap."

Freddie enjoying some turpentine on ice.

All kidding aside, this film is both disturbing and disturbed. Rave reviews by esteemed critics got us there, coupled with our deep admiration of the talented Philip Seymour Hoffman--an actor so gifted he deserves two first names. What I didn't realize going in was that the movie would be such a bummer, mostly because some of those critics had called it "riotously funny."  I must have missed that line, because what I saw for over two hours was an under-the-microscope look at Freddie Quell, a loony alcoholic war veteran filled with rage and a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder. Adding to the pervading discomfort was the actor Joaquin Phoenix's real-life nasty upper lip which, unless you are his mother or his girlfriend, is distracting to put it kindly and downright ugly to not. Then again, in certain lights--and believe me, we see Freddie in all lights since he is on screen for 95% of the time, if not more--he can look like a young Marlon Brando. This actually added to my downward spiral because I remembered that Marlon Brando has been dead for years, and besides, Joaquin Phoenix is no Marlon Brando.

The undertow dragging the media frenzy about this film is that it might be about Scientology and Hoffman's character might be suggestive of that religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Nobody knows but the director and the writer, and they were not with me tonight. Instead I was with my husband, who knew nothing more than I did but seemed to have a better time. That might be because the movie's other theme is Freddie's overwhelming obsession with thoughts of sex, vaginas and naked women and, secondarily, engaging in sex with naked women's vaginas. If you also enjoy those things, you might like the movie a tad more. But unless you are studying to become a psychiatrist or learning to tend bar--Freddie mixes up specialty cocktails whenever he has the time and the ingredients, including Lysol, torpedo fuel and paint thinner--do yourself a big favor and skip this one.

Famous for What

I'm sort of glad I don't matter much these days. If you are older than 45, you know what I mean--today's movers and shakers are young people stuck in the muck and mire of Facebook and Twitter. I recently read "50 People to Watch on Facebook," and learned some pretty shocking things, like some people have 4,500 Facebook friends. Others claim millions of Twitter subscribers, reading their pithy declarations such as, "Just had some really awesome gelato." They hang out with celebrities in posh restaurants in foreign lands, and many of them are celebrities because they hang out with celebrities in those same restaurants, eating some of that awesome gelato.

Danny and Rhea when they were less bad-looking...

Just what makes someone a celebrity? Are there really people who are better than other people? How could that be? Okay, some of them might be somewhat better because they are thinner or prettier or more talented, but then you realize that Danny DeVito is a major celebrity despite being a hideous dwarf--let's be real here--yet if he walked into a restaurant where you were eating, everyone would be going wild saying, "Look, there's Danny DeVito!" And it's not even like he's some fabulous actor or anything--he was funny enough a couple of times on TV, but now he is a full-fledged celebrity whose wife, the equally unattractive and unexciting and un-special Rhea Perlman--is also a celebrity and is now leaving him, or so I have read. Their divorce is news! Those two are written about! Why is that? Would you cross the street to meet either one of them? I know I wouldn't.

Another celebrity who mystifies me is a woman named Jessica Simpson, the newest spokesperson for Weight Watchers, and earning $4 million hawk their program. The poor thing must be pretty fat now because they just show her from the neck up, so you can just imagine. Anyway, I have no idea what her talent is or ever was, but I hope the diet works for her. It must be tough being a fat celebrity, especially when you have so much money to spend on food.

Once More Into the Fray

I refuse to spend too much of my Saturday morning, with the fall leaves out my window beckoning me to go for a crunchy, chilly walk among them, reminding you all of the events leading up to the election of one young and relatively inexperienced and unknown newbie senator of mixed race four years ago. What I will say is that any criticism of that man in the years since is written off immediately as evidence of racism and hatred of African-Americans. This has gotten tiring to say the very least.

Currently I am engaged in a cyber-argument with my cyber-nephew Keith.  I call him that because although he is actually my nephew by marriage, we have never met outside of Facebook. I think the world of him, and consider him intelligent and fair-minded, one of the few outspoken members of both my husband's family of radical lefties and the Democratic party who I respect and admire. BUT-- and it's a big but--Keith is completely unable or perhaps merely unwilling to consider the possibility that race has played a part in the election of Barack Obama! I would like to state publicly that I will not be voting for Obama in spite of the fact that it is so cool and touchy-feely and good vibrations and aren't we all one big happy family over here in America to have a black president. I agree that it would be fabulous if we had one who knew what the heck he was doing, and hopefully we will someday. Obama ain't him--aight?

For Vice President: The Choice is Yours!

               

Veep Cat and Mouse Game

Here at last is something all Americans, be they Republican or Democrat, can agree upon: Whether it's Obama or Romney who wins the election, he should live and be well for his whole term, because if either Joe Biden or Paul Ryan has to step up to the plate, there's not enough Valium in the pipeline to calm us all down. Tonight we saw the two of them up close and personal in their only televised debate, and here's roughly how it went:

Ryan: Our ambassador was unprotected in Libya. 
Biden: Bibi Netanyahu is a friend of mine.
Ryan: We will not put more of our troops in danger.
Biden: Yuk, yuk, tee hee, hardy, har-har.  
Ryan: Romney is ready to be president.
Biden: My wife and child were killed in a car crash.
Ryan: Mitt and I love this country and we will defend it.
Biden: I was there when Lincoln gave his address at Gettysburg.
Ryan: Mitt Romney will create jobs.
Biden: You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy.
Ryan: We have a five-point plan to end abortion. 
Biden: Bibi Netanyahu is a friend of mine.

Low Blow: Are those his real ears or was Paul Ryan wearing a Mickey Mouse cap?
Lower Blow: It seems to me if you are eager to show off your big mouth full of ill-fitting dentures, they should at least be white. Joe, get yourself some baking soda!

The Glass is Half Full

Finally--something good about getting older! This morning during my annual physical exam, my doctor said that it's way easier to detect breast cancer in older women. (Good news for me, having been older for quite some time already.) He said this while he was actively kneading my two ancient breasts like balls of dough. I suddenly realized it's likely because old breasts are saggier and flabbier than young ones. (Bad news for my husband, but beyond my control.) Dr. Pierce, ever the diplomat, explained that the tissue is "softer" in older women, not necessarily flabby or bad in any way whatsoever, no, no, he meant nothing of the sort, blah, blah, blah. Whatever--he was able to declare unequivocally that my two did not have any lumps, at least not today.

Having an annual physical is a scary thing, but something I do anyway. If I get a clean bill of health like I did this morning-- except of course for the arthritis and the high blood pressure--I can be assured of a good night's sleep for at least a month or so. After that, who knows what could start? With so many body parts, each one getting softer by the minute, there's no telling. But for now, I feel good enough. The best part was when Dr. Pierce said that my particular set of physical ailments are "as common as a penny." I love that! At least something about me is just like everyone else.

Cooking Our Own Big Bird

Years ago, almost too many to admit, my husband and I were fired from one of our oldest friendships because we announced we would be voting for George W. Bush in that first election. The axe came down on the phone following the first presidential debate--the one where Al Gore rolled his eyes and sighed a lot--and we never saw that friend again. (At least that was the reason given; I suspected the truer reason was something quite different but that the presidential election was a handy hook.) I considered that a one-time fluke, but then the same thing  happened four years later with a different friend when we again voted for Bush. That time I attributed it to the pickled stupor into which the avowed Democrat had sunk, all of us drinking and arguing in a Chicago hotel room.

Now here we are again, and we have been told we cannot attend a certain Thanksgiving dinner in Salt Lake City unless we promise to vote for Obama. Since I would sooner walk across a desert on hot coals, hang naked in a public square and be pelted with jellybeans, have my head shaved, relinquish my collection of original Beatle albums or give up watching reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" for a year than cast my vote for Obama, we will not be in attendance. My husband feels the same way, although his head is already shaved and he hardly has any Beatle albums, having been only six years old when they made their American debut. (He'll dispute this and drag out the White Album, but I have Meet the Beatles.)

So Mitch and I will fend for ourselves this Thanksgiving, which we have done for many years now. Fortunately we are both great cooks.