Moving All Over

Shame on Mary Matalin and shame on Joe Lieberman, both of whom think winning with lies and deception are more important than – well, the truth or the public trust. Mary, has a publishing imprint and she publishes right wing drivel. Which is fine as long as you understand what it is. But she has taken the next step and is publishing the same kind of attack crap that was used to defeat John Kerry. It has no basis in truth and there are no parameters for the lies. But they’ll make a great deal of money and isn’t that what she has always been about. For those of us who are struggling writers we yearn to have the kind of success Jerome Corsi will have with his book. He’s already on the NYTimes best seller list and it isn’t even in stores. But it’s not literature. It’s campaign misinformation. Mary is a political whore so it is not unexpected (And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Joe Lieberman is also a whore but he is also a US senator, an orthodox Jew and an Obama colleague. All of which have boundaries of decency.) What could he possibly be thinking when he says that Obama is a candidate who does not put his country first, who is a talker not a leader, and who has not crossed party lines to get anything done. I guess he like Corsi thinks that there are no limits to the level at which they will sink, “the point is to defeat Obama”.
Whew, I did a little name calling in the preceding paragraph but at least I didn’t attack anyone who has a moral core. Moving on...
Today, for the very first time, I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. My cousin Sheila and I decided we wanted to spend the day walking around NY. And so we met in Chelsea on the West side and ventured across town to the East side. And there it was, the magnificent construction miracle. And we walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn—just like that. It was wondrous. I was exhausted from our adventure so I took the subway home. There is no where better to see how amazingly diverse this country is than when you are walking down the street or riding on the NYC subway system.

When I got on the train I was entertained by a mariachi band—and one of them was actually schlepping a cello. They were so terrible it was hard to deal with them in a confined space but they were working so hard I gave them a dollar. It is not my practice to encourage subway entertainment – because it is a confined space and always invasive—but these guys were all dressed up and I liked their cowboy boots. When I got off the train I had a race up the subway escalator with an older Indian gentleman who acknowledged that I had won the race but was sure it was because I was much younger—I didn’t argue. Then I went around the corner to my local Tasti D-lite. Tasti is like soft ice cream or yogurt but it has no calories, no fat, is kosher and it is probably just chemicals with flavor—but good flavor. I was eating my Tasti and a man sitting next to me thought I wanted to make conversation. He was wrong but I am never rude. He told me he was an Evangelist Pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. For whatever reason he confessed that he was going to vote for Obama. And further, (and he believed in separation of church and state) he was advocating for everyone he knew to do the same. I thought that was somewhat surprising, but I guess people are not as shortsighted or stupid as Mary Matalin and Jerome Corsi think they are. Moving on...
In the “Love song of J Alfred Prufrock," there is a line that always resonates with me and I’m not sure why. It reads “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”
Today when I was at Starbucks this line came back to me. But it wasn’t because I was in a coffee place—or even because I sit around counting how many coffee spoons it takes to measure my life. It was because when I said “thank you” after the barista handed my my iced decaf tripio (whatever that means), he said “no problem” instead of you’re welcome. I guess it happens a lot because when I conducted one of my anecdotal surveys, most of the people I asked said that their response to “thank you” is usually “you’re welcome” but they have also noticed that lately people are responding with “no problem”. So what the heck does that mean? There was no problem making a coffee. There was no problem taking your money. I just don’t know how “no problem” in response to “ thank you” makes any sense. But what makes any sense anymore? Political lies, the Brooklyn Bridge still standing, coffee spoons, a race on an escalator, “no Problem”, or an Evangelist voting for a liberal Democrat? I guess the only thing that makes sense is to just keep moving on. We’re just sayin...Iris