I’m completely engrossed in everything that’s been going on since I took a break from this blog in early December. The more-than-usually-peculiar holiday season; the amazing content and spectacle of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a hallmark of a Presidential Inauguration Week the likes of which we’ve never known; the horrible and generally misreported events in Gaza; the process and personalities of the cabinet appointments; the economy continuing to nosedive and the machinations surrounding an unfortunately flawed stimulus package; the hubris and comic relief of [former!] Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich; a few personal nerve-wracking problems; and on top of it, Odetta, Harold Pinter and John Updike died. I’m breathless and confused; don't know what to think, say, do first. Fascinating events in hard times always make me think of two things: the ancient Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times, and the old joke about the recipe for chicken soup in the poor Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe: first, you steal a chicken…”
Listening to President Obama at the Inauguration and ever since, I feel like an orphan who was trapped for eight years with a sadistic moron, then rescued by a wise, sensitive professor. Watching him: calm, commanding without being overbearing; listening to him: speaking well and talking straight; digging him: a new experience in political outreach and diplomacy – I’m filled with a sense of tender pride and cool relief, despite the fires raging all around us. I don’t agree with every detail of everything he’s done, but he’s done more good for this country in 12 days than President Bozo did in eight years. It’s more than encouraging.
Still, we’re living in a harsher America than we were just a year ago. That’s what happens when the bottom falls out. When Microsoft announced they were laying off 1,500 people, I paled. Ever since GM imploded, it’s now “as Microsoft goes, so goes the nation.” It’s not encouraging.
And it’s been a bad week for women (how unusual…). I thought Caroline Kennedy would have made a good senator for New York, having been breast-fed on politics, being a lawyer and a mommy and a woman who’s had to cope with the mixed blessings of wealth and fame. It was disappointing when she came off like a liberal Sarah Palin - more poodle than pit bull and certainly not stupid, but embarrassingly inarticulate and uninformed. So now we have this Kirsten Gillibrand person who nobody below the Hudson Valley has ever heard of and all we know is she likes guns. Well, time will tell…
But the worst thing was the elimination of funding for family planning programs from the stimulus package, clearly a measure taken to placate the Republicans and the sacrifice didn’t produce even one Congressional vote. Why, when social change has to be “done slowly,” does the glacial-speed process so often fall hard on the backs of women? Studies and surveys up the wazoo have shown that, in developing countries, the ability of women to control their bodies, particularly their reproductive activity, there is an undeniable and positive link between this freedom and increasing education, as well as lessening poverty, disease, and domestic violence. Why don’t we recognize that the same is true for us, right here, right now? I can only hope there will be some amendment by the Senate.
And I hope that George Mitchell can make magic between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the way he did for the Irish, and that fewer people will lose jobs and homes, and the rest of us can hold fast until the tide turns. Meanwhile, all we can do is the best we can do. It’s cold up here in the Tower today. I think I’m going to make a chicken soup…
Listening to President Obama at the Inauguration and ever since, I feel like an orphan who was trapped for eight years with a sadistic moron, then rescued by a wise, sensitive professor. Watching him: calm, commanding without being overbearing; listening to him: speaking well and talking straight; digging him: a new experience in political outreach and diplomacy – I’m filled with a sense of tender pride and cool relief, despite the fires raging all around us. I don’t agree with every detail of everything he’s done, but he’s done more good for this country in 12 days than President Bozo did in eight years. It’s more than encouraging.
Still, we’re living in a harsher America than we were just a year ago. That’s what happens when the bottom falls out. When Microsoft announced they were laying off 1,500 people, I paled. Ever since GM imploded, it’s now “as Microsoft goes, so goes the nation.” It’s not encouraging.
And it’s been a bad week for women (how unusual…). I thought Caroline Kennedy would have made a good senator for New York, having been breast-fed on politics, being a lawyer and a mommy and a woman who’s had to cope with the mixed blessings of wealth and fame. It was disappointing when she came off like a liberal Sarah Palin - more poodle than pit bull and certainly not stupid, but embarrassingly inarticulate and uninformed. So now we have this Kirsten Gillibrand person who nobody below the Hudson Valley has ever heard of and all we know is she likes guns. Well, time will tell…
But the worst thing was the elimination of funding for family planning programs from the stimulus package, clearly a measure taken to placate the Republicans and the sacrifice didn’t produce even one Congressional vote. Why, when social change has to be “done slowly,” does the glacial-speed process so often fall hard on the backs of women? Studies and surveys up the wazoo have shown that, in developing countries, the ability of women to control their bodies, particularly their reproductive activity, there is an undeniable and positive link between this freedom and increasing education, as well as lessening poverty, disease, and domestic violence. Why don’t we recognize that the same is true for us, right here, right now? I can only hope there will be some amendment by the Senate.
And I hope that George Mitchell can make magic between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the way he did for the Irish, and that fewer people will lose jobs and homes, and the rest of us can hold fast until the tide turns. Meanwhile, all we can do is the best we can do. It’s cold up here in the Tower today. I think I’m going to make a chicken soup…
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