The Husband Tree

There they sit, those widowers. Looking lost in their gray aloneness. Singles in church, singles in the restaurant. Wearing mis-matched socks.
Little do they know, they're widow fodder. In fact, they're low hanging fruit.
John was the best of them. A former lifetime member of the Republican party, he had a brain waiting to be molded. The author of a house bill to restore tax breaks to home-based business, he had earned his modicum of fame. A good looking guy with just a bit too much fat, he could be slimmed down.
Three years of married life, he's a slimmer Democrat and tons of fun. He entertains me daily with his avocation, magic, and earns some coin with his vocation, accounting. He always has a project: The History of Russian Opera is current and with him I watch A Life For the Tsar in it's four hours of glory, found at Amazon for $10. Since he creates on a typewriter, my Internet facility, such as it is, is indispensable to him.
We're learning Russian from Rosetta Stone and planning a Volga River Cruise. He's been amazed at all the places I've taken him. I've been amazed that he's been willing to go.
What a good guy; and there he was, lonely and wifeless. Ripe for the picking.
A real treasure. Widow fodder.

Is it ok to be intelligent?

Dears:

I hid my Phi Beta Kappa key when I became a Christian because I was pretty sure Orville Roberts would come and take it and send it back. "We don't want none of them scholar-types in this deal" seemed to be the prevailing cant.

Then, steadier believers steered me to the likes of Pascal and C.S. Lewis and Phillip Yancy, all of whom were first rate thinkers. Pascal's Dilemma: If I live as if there is no God, and get to my end only to find I was wrong, what an awful consequence! If I live as if there is a God and get to the end of my life and find I was wrong, I still will have lived a fine life. The right decision comes down to living a Godly life and hoping for the best.

Lewis wrote: Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or a Lord, and proved the first two were impossible based on his life; thus leaving the third to be true.

And Phillip Yancy? I became his disciple when I read his column in Christianity Today, a slight little magazine much frequented by ministers. Then I read his books, most notably What's So Amazing About Grace?

You may, dear children, wonder why I have left Lee Strobel off the list? I'll tell you. He's a good reporter, but he ain't no deep thinker. Hey, wait a second. Is that true of me? "No, no, Orville. You can't have my Phi Beta Kappa key."

Why Does my Bose Need a Plug?

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a Seminar Thinker in my book so I am reading his book, Flat,Hot, and Crowded about the rapidly deteriorating world we live in. The book has caused me to think I must solve the world's energy poverty because some 75 per cent of the people in Africa have no power, thus are falling further and further into AIDs, poverty, and ignorance.
And, of course, today's delusion of grandeur is "It's up to me to fix that."
So, the question: When I made a crystal set in 4th grade, and got a working radio, it didn't need a plug. Why does my Bose need one? And what does that mean about electricity and the electric grids in the world.?
I'm sure the answer is obvious, but when I consulted the smartest people in my little orbit, they couldn't answer. If a plug was optional in 4th grade in Pittsburg Kansas, why isn't a plug optional in Sub-Saharan Africa?
It may be a silly question, but it's my silly question.

A remeniscence

At my 6:30 a.m. 12-step meeting today, John W shared his Delirium Tremins story: seeing ghouls, hearing screaming, seeing fires, etc. When that happened to grandma letty in 1965, for the same reason (over-imbibing of alcoholic beverages, for those little ones who don't know what DTs stand for), I was clapped into a mental hospital. Because my friends came to visit with pitchers of martinis and my husband always brought me a few beers and because I always kept a bottle of vodka in the woods under an old log, I never got better. Further, I was being medicated with tons of tranquilizers which is what they did in the 60's and drinking, too, often I was "out of it." When I went out for a visit anywhere I always was brought in drunk as a coot.
Here's the deal: I never associated my mental state with alcohol. That seems unlikely, today, because the media are full of articles and dramas which highlight the problem. Not so in the 1960's. Then, an alcoholic lived under a bridge with a bottle in a brown paper bag, or so the popular culture believed.
I had a fancy house with a housekeeper and a scientist-husband and I was only in my 30's and (if I do say so myself) a looker so I was too rich and too young and (believe it or not) too pretty to be a drunk. Hence, I must be chronic, paranoid schizophrenic, a diagnosis which terrified me. Meant, to me, that I'd never recover.
In 1975 something amazing happened. My dear friend Anna with whom I imbibed in the woods, making us drinking buddies, was caught drinking grain alcohol in the hospital's research lab and was sent to AA. A new deal, then. She soon had rides, cards, plants and I decided that while I wasn't an alcoholic like Anna, I wanted all that attention.
The two old timers in AA who picked me up for my first meeting later told the woman who was to be my sponsor (or mentor in the program) that "she's so sick she'll never make it." It's 30 years later, and I made it. Not without a lot of prayer and effort, but I made it.

Merry Christmas to All

Dears
The Christmas letters went out today along with a card with this address on it. I doubt if anyone takes the trouble to find my blog, but it would be heartening if they did. I expect I should be advertising my books but I think the only ones I have stocked are In the End It's Faith and Clues for the Clueless. Either would be yours for $10, and I'll ship and handle free. John and I are appearing at an evangelism festival in Orange County in March and we should unload some there. His much more useful book is Church-led Evangelism Ministry. I'd send that along for the same sum.
I see by the news that Wyndham is downsizing its Timeshare operations. I wonder how many of the old crowd will fall to the axe. I did it early when I wanted a few weeks off for Maine in high season, but I wouldn't have been there long anyway, I suspect. Especially now.
Tough times. Write if you wish to comment, and I am thinking of each and every one of you with fondness and interest.

It took a Little Old Lady in Vista, CA

I am a great fan of Media Critics, both in the press and on the telly with the esteemed Howard Kurtz.
Lately, they all missed one of the amazing stories of the year.
In the latest Congo Rebellion, it was not Condi Rice who negotiated with the rebel leader. She was probably playing the piano in Crawford. It was, of all people, Kyra Phillips, the afternoon anchor on CNN. She got the guy on the little camera phone, asked him if he'd heed a cease fire, and he said yes. Here's what the State Department is missing: These guys love to be on TV. They know what CNN is. They probably watch it in their opium dens in living color. Obviously, Kyra Phillips has more clout than Condi Rice. Condi Rice hasn't won an Emmy. Kyra Phillips has.
But that's just the CNN beginning. During the election, which they covered so splendidly they even time travelled Jessica Yellin, it was beleaguered money man what's his name (see; I'm old) who manned the complaints nationally about election irregularities. He even had a magic map which showed the thousands of calls and their locations. He even trouble shot with state and local election officials in those complaint areas. He even resolved complaints. (Oh, God, I know his name as well as I know my own. I watch him on Your Money and admire him enormously. My advice: don't get old.)
Barack is already on to it. He has his fireside chat on You Tube. He probably has the power to move the CNN government to his purposes by posting his government on Twitter or even his webpage. To think this through, he praises accountability and what could be more transparent than taking over a TV network for his governing. I propose Fox. And I think Keith Oberman, with his 30 million dollars, should be his interlocutor.
Damn, I still can't think of the CNN anchor who handled the complaints. I know I could look on their website but I'm on a roll.......

Prohibition and my role in irt

John and I sat in a microbrewery in Naples, CA yesterday for an iced tea. Woe is us. Anyhow, on the wall was a picture of protesting beer lovers during Prohibition
So I told John of my favorite tale of what happened to me then when my parents, a partying pair, couldn't get their booze.
First, you have to understand that we lived in a two story house. You have to get it that my nursery was directly above the kitchen. Then you have to see that their home brew required agitation.
The cradle that formerly sheltered their newborn (moi) became a brewery and I was relegated to the floor. A rope connected the cradle to a kitchen window below and it was rocked every time mama washed her hands at the kitchen sink.
They said at 4 months of age I didn't differentiate between the floor and the cradle, but that's a likely story.
A likely story, indeed.

Oh,yeah. They forgot

In the endless disection of the McCain loss, everyone has forgotten what I believe was a seminal moment: He didn't know how many houses he had. He left all that to Cindy (or more likely, her secretary.)While some comic derision followed his answer, McCain really lost his credibililty on the economic issues, which he admitted were his weak suit.
But what did he do to compensate? He cozied it up with Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Senator who was deregulator #1 in the congress, and thus primarily responsible for the non-insurance of most of the mortgage securities.
When Obama added his four stipulations, formed by his economic team of Buffet and Volker etc, which included no inflated CEO bonuses, etc., McCain sat like a stone in the planning meeting according to observers. That was the meeting he suspended his campaign to attend. Stunt #1.
Stunt #2: Sarah Palin, an empty-headed Miss Wasilla who had lucked into the governor's chair in Alaska after falling into the hands of a tactian who sensed she could be a fine figurehead for his program of a gas pipeline. Like Bush who had so little understanding of women of accomplishment he nominated Harriet whats-her-name for the supreme court, McCain evidently thought that since Palin had reproductive equipment, she would steal the disgruntled Hillary vote. How thick can he be?
Let me digress: A few years ago, when Tiger Woods won the golf scene, a well-known columnist lamented that "they have taken over baseball and football; now they have golf."
He He He. I wonder what that guy is thinking now???????

Home stretch. Barack Obama may be the luckiest candidate in the history of elections. Just as his no-drama, low key style was causing Drama King John McCain to attack and fall even in the polls, came the national economic drama that left Obama's steadiness contrast with McCain's hopping uselessly about like Topsy. In consequence, Colin Powell, the other white black man, endorsed Obama unequivocally. That meant that finger pointing and name calling spewed from an imploding McCain campaign. That led to one commentator coming out and saying, at long last, that the Republican candidate was semi-senile. We've all known that since the Afghanistan border with Iraq comment resonated nationwide. Look, I'm older than McCain. And I would no more run a necessarily punishing campaign for national office than I would drink Drano.
McCain wanted to be President so very, very, very badly that he torpedoed his party. Mitt Romney would have been better. Also lots of Republican governors who were subsumed by the McCain head start. That probably accounts for part of the party sniping. The result is that Obama has realigned the red state blue state split, so carefully promoted by Carl Rove, into a fuzzy purple, here and there.Barack said he admired Reagan for his strategy. Well, then, he has a pretty spiffy strategy record his own self. I love it. The Democrats love it. And the Republicans? They brought it on themselves.

What a Year for a Political Junky

Barak, whom I have phoned for and done without ice cream to donate to, is about to nail it. If all holds current, those two little girls will grow up in the White House. It is just too heady a prospect. He'll think after a few years of office that McCain was gentle and kind compared to what he'll be facing from people and pundits alike.
In this time of turmoil, I have a great anecdote from Nina in Stonington, Maine. She said that since nobody was buying lobsters, the town's money crop, and since the middlemen had shut down and were'nt transporting to market, and since the lobster fishermen only had a few months to make their yearly money, the town was sponsoring a lobsterfest at the town dock where the left-over crustaceans would be sold for a pittance and all 1800 (+) townies would eat like royaland ty for pennies. WONDERFUL.
But I digress. Obama has a rough, rough road when he's elected. Korea. Georgia, Iran, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, regulations, bail outs, that's just a bit of it. What heartens me is what I wrote last year in the primaries: he's not afraid of excellence. He won't shy away from kknowledgeable, accomplished, and talented thinkers. That will be a real change in Washington. McCain, like Hillary, likes cronies. Barak has built an organization from the ground up that will support him and hold him accountable. I'm oneof those 300,000+ voters and I pledge here and now to do my part!
What do they mean in the editoriall columns and on Fox news that he hasn't done anything much? He's built a worldwide organization that has toppled the Clinton buzzsaw and looks like it's overcoming (chorus of we shall overcome, anyone) the nastiest, dirtiest street fighters who have stolen the last four election for the republicans. That's not very much? Baby, it's everything.

vote on Nov 4, Grandma Letty

In the 60's it was Harvard Business School. Now it's Geoge Washington University

Dearest grandchildren:
nce upon a time, in Grandma Letty's day, the sheiks sent their sons to Harvard Business School. Now we're sending those sheiks $700 billion a year. The HBS was the villain in the last century. The villain today is undoubtedly George Washington University. Why? Because leaders of far-away countries are retuning to their neutrinos from studying there, where they learned how to manipulate our media. Need an example? The Georgian President (John McCain doesn't know how to pronounce his name so it's ok I can't spell it) quickly spun his case with Russia, where he was partly at fault, on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and other high-class media outlets and even convinced President Bush to weigh in prematurely. Of course that wasn't hard. To weigh in prematurely, I mean.
It was poetry in motion to see that guy manipulate.
Since most people are watching American Idol rather than CNN, the resonance wasn't wide; but the nightly news picket it up and that;s 60 million people. A few of the boys and girls even interviewed Mr. Georgia on the air. His perfect English and his knowledge of our culture were scary. After all, he's a foreigner.
But then, so were the sheik's sons.

What a Pleasure Life is at 75

When I lived in Boston, one of the venerable old blue bloods and an aunt of one of my friends authored a book called To Be Young was Very Heaven, an idea I found abhorrent. Being young was painful. Being old is great. I simply love being old.
Of course I am fortunate. I have few aches and pains and when they come I go swimming, and they go away. I have a few internal problems but nothing that Pepto Bismal or Tylanol won't cure (read mask) and I have a wonderful husband (number 3) and wonderful children and step children. The latter are as attentive and interested in us as the fomer. We have tons of grandchildren, as I stated in my blog introduction, and they are all being raised right. We have outlived our savings but we limp along on social security and tighten our belts when we need to and really have few economic problems. True, we don't spend our Winters in Rio but they don't like us much there anyhow. Besides, Winters in Southern California are very agreeable. We haul out the blankets.
We have many projects to keep us interested; we live in a lively place; the train to San Diego costs $5 for Seniors, we have a bus at the corner which (eventually) gets us to the train, and life is good. If we want to work we can, as we demonstrated for a time last year and this. Gray hair is suddenly an employment plus.
We both have churches which sustain and even please us: his and mine which we frequent, and I hang out mornings at a 2-step group with sound people I love. It jump-starts my day to do that. We have a coffee date with neighbors in the mid-morn, and we usually go out to lunch on a newspaper which pays us to do reviews by reimbursing the food. What could be better.
John has an office and I have an office and just between you and me I think we spur each other on.
I really am tickled with the way life is going. Seventy-five is a good age.

The real villian: the Harvard business schoool

The late, great columnist Art Buchwald once analyzed the 70's oil crisis this way; Since all the sheiks send their sons to the Harvard Business school, that place is the real repository of blame for our problems with oil.

So what has changed? Just that still another gedneration has graduated, and they are using the 700 billion in yearly oil revenues to not only control oil but also to buy up U.S. c ompanies and real estate. The Chrysler Building, for heaven's sake. Do you need another example?

While Shrub (Molly Ivan's name for George W) fiddled with ethanol for the farm lobby, the country fell further and further behind even Brazil, for heaven's sake. Do you need another example?

I am just flabbergasted at Shrub's incompetence. I don't know why I should be, as a C student at Yale who was a cheerleader, a draft dodger, and a business man who failed at every company he even started and who used his daddy's influence to get into business school. Ye Gods, what did we expect?

I'm signing up for WEcansolveit.org and urge all my readers to do the same.

Going Green for Earth Day

Yesterday, we did our part. We drove to Oceanside (11 miles) , parked our car, and joined the train headed for San Diego, thus reducing our carbon footprint. We had to be on 5th street by 10:30, which meant leaving Oceanside on the last early commuter train which left at 10 till 8 a.m.

There were many other green people on the coaster, figuratively speaking. The most admirable were our seatmate and one other gentlemen who strapped their bikes into the place reserved for them. They cited expanding girth as well as enviornmental consciousness as their reasons, but whatever it takes, I guess. They had ridden their bikes to Oceanside, parked them on the Coaster, then rode them to their separate destinations as they disembarked. Our caps were tipped to them.

One elderly gent who got on at Carlsbad (A toney suburb) exclaimed as we moved along that "this whole thing is un American." When we looked puzzled, he extrapolated "people getting on the train, then getting off to busses; it's socialistic." He was joshing, but right.

The ride took us along Highway 101, the original 1 also known as the Pacific Highway with its whitecaps and fancy houses and restaurants; my dear hubby who always drives and therefore can never rubberneck marvelled at the sights he had never seen. A small enclave in Solana Beach which featured cedar shake houses particularly delighted him. "I couldn't see this from the road," he exclaimed.
We spent $11 for two senior round trip tickets and learned we could have spent $2 more and taken the Sprinter to the Coaster (alas, there is an ad man in every organization!) and only driven .35 of a mile. The Coaster tickets were good for the trolley, so we got within two blocks of our destination, a 46 mile trip.
And best of all, was the relaxation. John (hubby) kept saying "this is like being on vacation."
He was right.

Up There With the Big Boys

Sent this to a friend in Orlando who used to be in the business.
"Hi, toots. In exchange for my freebies, toss off a personal experience story. Wyndham hired me and when I gave them my misgivings about the industry they talked integrity and honor , hired me conditionally, and I begin training tomorrow. (Betcha they don't have any idea that I'm pushing 76!!!) We'll see if its really different.
Meanwhile, I'm collecting horror stories and theorizing its the difference between used car lots and Lexus dealers. We'll see if I'm right. The tab here is $22,000 (dropped) with 6% commission. At Welk down the road its $700 a sale, but its a great resort. The juices are flowing again. Fun. Add your 2 cents.
Love
LLC (that's a limited liability corporation, doncha know)"

It's Obvious, but I don't read it anywhere.....

Dearest Ones: Emma has a music scholarship and the two graduates this year are honor grads. What could make a grandma happier?
To turn to the meat of this blog (unlike the latest candidates debate which was pure milk), it seems to have escaped everybody that Obama has run a truly amazing campaign. Grandma Letty was observing some months ago that he didn't seem to be afraid of excellence (unlike Hilary who dotes on cronies) and that trait has certainly paid off. So he fraternized with a Weatherman? Grandma Letty fraternized with a Weatherman and took their newsletter in the 70's and harbored notions that while they might be revolutionaries, they were slightly justified revolutionaries. After all, if J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon were running the country, why not blow them up? Temping, but really not a sound idea in the long run.
But I digress. I get daily updates for the candidate, courtesy of a man called David Plouffe whom I hope will be Chief of Staff. I am seduced into donating once again and having dinner with Barack and four other afficianados. I formed the original gray haired ladies for Obama in Vista, CA, and I phone banked at the labor hall. The quality of callers would make a boiler room head dizzy with delight. This has been a primer for political campaigns, at least the part of it I've seen. The riposte by the candidate that "attacks are the old politics" is resonating. Hilary's negatives climb and climb. If he can get away with this one, we'll be done with swiftboating and 3 a.m. phone calls and get down to brass tacks for a change.
Kids, you're viewing a sea change. Let's hope it holds.

So proud of the evangelicals (it's true)

Last night's compassion forum on CNN with Barack and Hilary proved something I've been claiming for four years, when I parked my Kerry sticker in the parking lot at North Coast Church. To wit: gone are the nutcases. The ministers, one of the my old pastor Joel, asked questions of the candidates about climate change, Darfur, poverty, etc.etc. etc. It fell to the editor of Newsweek to ask about life beginning at conceptions. (The last was adroitly and reasonably answered by the two, quite in line with my convictions.)
In short, evangelicals aren't the lunatic fringe today. I think they used to be, but as more and more thinking people join large churches with large agendas, the questions about homosexuality and gay marriage and abortion are no longer the sole focus. It is true, they are still concerns, but they don't overshadow world-wide concerns of vastly more importance to our planet. God, after all, charges us to have dominion, but not to rape and pillage.

I am tickled pink that the stigma attached to me for seven years of laboring in the evangelical vineyards is beginning to fade, if not disappear. God is having the last word after all.

Here's how it was, kids

Back before all of you were born, grandma Letty was relieved of her duties at the Orlando (FL) Sentinel when the paper was purchased by a Chicago company; since she had to support herself somehow, she began to teach part time at several colleges and sell something called "Timeshare."

In Orlando, all she had to do was get a real estate license and look presentable and be upright. A lot has changed, but what else is new?

In 1978, the industry was recovering from being like the wild west. Felons and drunks and disbarred lawyers and used car salesmen were grandma Letty's fellows. We'd often get paid (or not paid) more or less depending on whim, and the contests were legendary. Grandma Letty got a "spiff" (reward) of $5000 once for selling the most timeshare weeks in a month. She didn't believe it until the check cleared the bank.

Eventually, order was more or less restored. The earliest Timeshare resorts were staffed by veterans of the Florida land sales of the 1920's and 30's, and when a developer pulled into town to recruit workers, he hired car salesmen; so the terms "spiff" for bonus, "T.O." for Take Over by the Sales Manager. and other arcane language is familiar to every ex car salesman. In those days, when we got paid (if we did) we got from $500 to $700 a sale. We "hauled" "ups" or took clients on a tour, had a "love line" where the salesmen got preferential treatment if they were very, very friendly with the sales manager. (Especailly females.)

Grandma Letty worked her way into a real estate firm which specialized in timeshare and which had so many that when we sold out one, we had another to go to. That was a breakthrough. Our manager used to laugh at the family ownership and when a new baby was born in the family the manager would announce "he was just appointed vice president of sales" which was about what it was like.

In Orlando, eventually some 40 timeshare resorts sprouted up, so we could always work. I stayed with Island One, my group, and more or less respected the firm. In fact, I even sold them T-shirts to wear as uniforms. In 1983, we were sent to Freeport, Virgin Islands for selling $600000 in one month, and because I led the line, Dan, my husband, was included, too. This was a line of some 20 ragtag souls who really had a good time. I won the ping pong tournament, and my TO had bet on me and made a fortune. Good days.

Just about then I was asked to be editor of a paper and did that for 17 years. After all, that's what I was trained for. I had a great time doing that, too, and when I retired, moved to California, and flirted with timeshare sales again, I found that big boys were in the game. Wyndham granted me an interview after I aced their personality test, and so did Lawrence Welk resort. Since the latter was 8 miles from home, I was hoping it would work out. Needless to say, I got my real estate license.

I'll let you know

Work hard and have fun and be like Jennika, Magna Cum Laude. (That's a good thing.)

Love,

Grandma Letty

ye Gods

While reeling from my studies for the California Real Estate exam, I posted a hideous thing. I called B. Obama "Obamma." I'll bet Elmer Best, my old editing teacher, is rotating like a chicken on a rotisserie in his Lawrence, Kans. grave.
I reminded myself of an earlier day when I read Odgen Nash's "The one "l" lama, he's a priest. The two "l" lamma, he's a beast. But I will bet a silk pajama, that there is no three "l" lammma." The footnote was for a certain conflagration that brought out three fire trucks and was, indeed, a "three "l" lammma.
Well, I will bet a silk pajama, that there is no two "m" Obama. Doesn't scan, but rings true.
By the way, against all odds I passed the durn exam. Fortunately, I didn't have to spell anything. Just fill in a computer sheet with four answers, only two of them wrong. Choose one, indeed.
If I weren't so tough from years of Timeshare sales ( you want to get used to rejection? Try that.) I would be hurt that my old journalism school has produced a book on blogs that did not include alumna grandma Letty. They'd never pass the real estate exam.

Hey, Wait a Minute

Lately, Geraldine Ferraro is the latest staff member to be cast out because she is politically incorrect. For those of you living in a cave, she recently opined that B. Obamma is where he is because he is a black man, and that a white woman with his record of accomplishments would not be taken seriously.
Of course, she's a little bit right. Recently a great political thinker said the reason Obamma was leading in Virginnia was because with one swipe of the pen a white voter could expiate 400 years of guilt.
But I submit another couter: Hiliary is where she is because she was married to one of the most powerful men in the country. And when he left her alone to reform health care she fell flat on her sunny face.
Geraldine, dear, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

return to the blog

Dears:
Grandma Letty has been spending all her time teaching and learning; she has taken the California Real Estate Exam after much study, and will not get the problematical results for a few more days. Hence, the home movie" Return to the Blog."
It occured to Grandma Letty that in the seven years she has lived in California, she has amassed four licenses: 1)dog;2)marriage;3)tax preparer;4)real estate (assuming she passes a very hard exam.) Certainly, the one that so far has worked out the best is #2. Number 3 paid only a little more than the investment to get it; Number 4 has great promise, because the aforesaid grandma letty sold Timeshare in Orlando for a grand total of about 12 years. Believe me, that paid well.
No reason to believe it won't be the same, here.
Further, if the place I want to sell weeks takes me in, it's right down the road. Commuting in San Diego county, my place of residence, is a killer. The timeshare I hope to work at is 15 minutes away on NO FREEWAYS AT ALL.

Can you imagine how appealing that is? Probably not, but take my word its the boon of all boons.

Wish me luck, dearest ones. My first buy will be a family reunion here, with airfares paid to the far-flung relatives. Kids, that's you. Cross your fingers, and those of you who pray could do a little of that.

Here's what it used to be like when I was young

Dears,

Grandma Letty, in her day, was something of a superstar. Salutatorian of her High School Class (the Valedictorian got an A in orchestra and Grandma Letty got a B in Chorus. That made the difference.) Delegate to Girl's State and elected Attorney General There, State wide debater earning many, many trophies, and a college record that included "Outstanding Woman in Journalism, writing awards, presidency of the class and of her sorority,Editor of the Daily Newspaper, National Debater, Judge on the Student Court,Phi Beta Kappa, Mortar Board, etc etc etc.

You know what? When I flashed that resume, the best job I could get was as an Editorial Assistant. My equivalent, I think, was Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connnor who graduated (at the same time) first in her class at Stanford University Law School and was offered a job (the only one) as a Paralegal. Gender discrimination was such a fact of life for us ladies of the 50's that we just accepted it. In hindsight, we should have raised hell.

I am tickled pink that my smart and savvy grandbabies will be taken seriously. I sincerely hope they aim high. We were cowed. They needn't be.

Now, It's The Clintons

Hello, dears

Have you noticed? It's no longer "Hillary". It's "The Clintons." Since I did so well with predicting the New Hampshire primary, I'll go out on a limb, again. Since even the really big boys in the media are calling them "the clintons," I think the average American queasiness about the pair running the country, instead of her, means trouble. I'll pick Obama for the winner in Super Tuesday.
Of all the endorsements Barack has garnered, I think Caroline Kennedy's is the most telling: she wrote in the New York Times that he could be the kind of president her father was. WOW. Only I said it louder: WOW.
Isn't this fun? Twice as many voters came out in South Carolina as had voted four years ago. There really is the potential for a new, broader, more diverse coalition in the Democratic party. Obama said he admired Reagan for forging a new vision for Republicans. He DID NOT say he admired Reagan's stance or issues, as the Clintons (there it is again) advertised.
Anyhow, I sent money to McCain in 2000. Today, I'm sending a similar pittance to Obama.

Great Fun and Profit

Dears:

Grandma Letty gave a talk today and part of the presentation concerned the early days at America Online, more easily known as AOL, which were guided by a marketing guru of a CEO named Steve Case.

I had written Clues for the Clueless and received a message on my IBM from "Tribe." She said that if I participated in a new Forum (sort of a magazine on line; a quasi-website but located on AOL, that the forum would publicize my book as a quid pro quo. Envisioning Book-of-the-Month Club status, I signed up and went to work. The Forum was AARF, Addiction and Recovery Forum, and it took its format from the ground-breaking Gay and Lesbian Forum, the first place in the nation (that I knew of) where rights and networking were discussed among its adherents.

Begun as a commercial venture, it never yielded much revenue and after some 8 years or so was scrapped, but in the meantime it attracted to the Forum (later re-christened A&R for Addiction and Recovery) a phalanx of brilliant people from early computer nerds (we were doing this in the 90s and AOL had its own programming language) to psychiatrists to addicts of all stripes and shapes, including ground breakers like Kay Sheppard and Joy (? The food lady).

At the time, I lived in a 10-acre spot in the country outside of Orlando and hosted the group for a picnic/program in 94 or 95; I forget which. It was memorable for its collection of addicts. The sugar addicts and the food addicts fought, and one food addict was so heavy she broke my computer chair. Joy, the sharpest of all, had flown in from Los Angeles and the majority were from New York and Michigan and North Carolina, where the group was headquartered. We had never before met face to face; we were the first online company structure that I knew about.
It turned out that I had made a trip to Spain with one of the other addict's former husbands (when I was single) and other revelations followed.

There's a lot to be said for anonymity.

We did check it with AA's World Service in New York and they gave it their blessing as we held online AA meetings several times a day. Friends of Bill Wilson meetings were consequently going on AOL chat sessions, but we had rules and conducted ourselves as much like a face-to-face meeting as we could. We were a great boon for shut-ins and those just trying the waters, because the anonymity was total. Our screen names didn't even give us away. We sent many a seeker on to AA meetings in their localities after satisfying them they would be helped (read loved.) It was a heady time.

My book enjoyed a modest success and I was so impressed that all these people were giving their all for free that I bought AOL stock (at $40 a share; sold it three years later at $120 a share and took Dan (husband #2) to Machu Pichu. When I had a little money, my greatest pleasure was to go somewhere. Travel was my reward.......A&R indirectly got me there.

whoops

Dear Grandchildren,

Like all the heavy hitters, I believed the polls. I thought it would be Obama in New Hampshire by 10 points. Fortunately, only the one or two of you who read this knew I was wrong. Contrast that with "The Best Political Team on Television" and the News Hour Crew. Contrast that with Mark Halperin, the political editor of Time magazine.

Do you know what they told all of America? Donna Brazil (a heavy hitter in more ways than one) and Gore's old campaign manager said at 7 Eastern time last night as the polls closed that "Obama is a tidal wave that can't be stopped." Evidently, among their other skills, the Clintons can stop tidal waves. Mark Halperin didn't even include Arkansas governor Huckabee among the list of real contenders for the Presidency in his new book, and told an Arkansas audience in September that Huckabee had no chance for election. Last night he beat Guliani in a state where the latter had been stumping since last year.

Now I know I'm just a garden variety political junkie who has zilch national standing after a lifetime in the garden variety press, but at least I don't have public egg on my face. Nor did I have a large meal of my words at 10 p.m. Pacific Time.

I'm beginning to think being inconsequential is a good thing.

Love to you all
Your grandma

a black, a woman, and a jew

Dear Grandchildren:

This could never have happened before. First, a black and a woman are vying for our presidency, and now it looks like Mayor (multimillionaire) Bloomberg of New York will enter the race if he thinks he can displace the nominees of both parties. That rounds out the collection of people "who can't win". Who's next? Maybe Georgia Senator Max Clelland, who is a disabled veteran. Or with all the maiming our current president has accomplished, maybe Clelland is just too mainstream.

The early election results certify that Oprah was right, as usual. If Obama defies the odds and carries the election, will he make her Ambassador to Kenya, his turmoil-ridden ancestral country? They certainly need her there. Who was the Washington taste-maker who became an Ambassador? Ethel Merman played her on the stage in "Call Me Madame." Maybe someday a Merman Wannabe will play Oprah in a similar drama! (It just came to me, slowly, as things do nowadays. It was Perle Mesta, the hostess who created congeniality in Washington and was sent as Ambassador to Luxemboug (where she could do no harm.)

Keep up, little ones. Obama's message is for the young, and the young can change the world. We did, for a short two years., a long time ago.

Ruminations About the Disintegration of ATT/Yahoo at SBC

Dearest Growing (boy baby coming in January in Phoenix, courtesy of Sarah)Audience:

Your grandma Letty participated in the deregulation of AT&T in the late 1970s when it surrendered its monopoly status. (That means that up till then it was the only phone company in the country. It was sued and the Federal Trade Commission said it had to break up into four "Baby Bells" and compete with Sprint and a few others which wanted to begin as national phone companies.) A man named deVries was it's CEO, and an assemblage of engineers, most of them on the verge of retirement, gathered in Orlado to offer rebuttals to the government's case.

We often, we 5 editors, worked into the night for this goal of stopping deregulation. Our weapons were words turned out by long-term, spoiled, AT&T project engineers who had seniority simply because, like committee heads in the US House of Representatives, they had been around a long time doing very little. In corporate America in the 50s and 60s,an AT&T job was prized for that very reason. High pay, few demands, a veritable comforable couch of a job: that was AT&T.

My first husband, a very winning personality, was recruited by AT&T for his first job in Kansas City, so I know in decades what I say. He also had Navy service, and AT&T promised to make up the difference between his Ensign paycheck and his original ATT paycheck. We got hundreds of dollars for months because they didn't know he had only worked for them for 6 weeks so was entitled to 6 weeks worth of difference, if that's clear. The place was so big and unwieldy they didn't know what they were doing much of the time. Being an honorable man, he wrote his old superior and asked what to do. The superior said "keep it." Bob sent it back.

Flash forward to divistiture, which is what it was called when the FTC said "split up". It was a true boondoggle, but it kept these fellows paid until they all retired. It all came to nothing. Hence: Sprint, Nextel, and now, back again, AT&T.

Flash forward to my ATT/Yahoo Account, masquerading as SBCGlobal.net. Because the whole deal of our changing from 2 phone lines, John's and mine, to one (John's) we caused an international flap, from India to Kansas City. It took 8 tech support calls to AT&T which all started with an anoying series of canned questions to a guy in India. Now I respectfully submit they are superior to us technically in Bangalore. I also submit that as troubleshooters they are idiots. I recently had trouble with a Dell power cord and all the guy could do was keep sending the same thing. A tech guy here solved it in two seconds. But I digress. After talking to Tier 1 technical support, as they are called, I had done everything they told me to do before calling so they surrendered me to Tier 2. Enter Kansas City. We'd fix it immediately, after a little tweaking, and then SBC would stop my account. Even after I had been rerigistered twice, they said I wasn't registered. Nothing would convince them otherwise. We went hopefully to an ATT phone store. They didn't haveTHE PHONE NUMBER OF TECH SUPPORT AND COULDN'T FIND IT ON THE WEB. The manager of the store said he would call customer service for us. We waited the usual 15 minutes and left in discust. I finally found a supervisor (after a letter of apology from AT&T for messing us up) and wrote her that I didn't want apologies, I wanted solutions. I heard, typically, nothing back.
Now I know I'm no computer guru. I also know after doing my own troubleshooting, including taking the battery out of my laptop, then putting it back in (that worked after Tier 2 gave up) but the Bangalore gang is really useless for anyone who has some experience. Not for nothing have I been trying to work computers from the old Compaq days throgh a Community Leader with AOL to now where, for heaven's sake, I have a blog. Can't AT&T had a tier 2 helpline immediately for us old guys?

Work hard on your computer skills, evereyone. The guys in Bengalore are lost if it isn't rote.

A guaranteed Audience of 27

Dears:
Pity the poor first-time blogger who sends wisdom into the ether and it is like a Billboard in the woods: No one ever sees it. All 27 of you grandchildren, and perhaps your mommys and daddys and step mommys and step daddys could, possibly, take and interest.
The first thing I have to tell you is that I'm vastly encouraged by the election results in Iowa. Your grandmother was a sort-of hippy who worked for Kennedy 1 and sees a Black Camelot on the Horizon. (Ask your parents what that means. You should find out.)
Jackie and John Kennedy were not afraid of excellence. Take Pat Nixon, who called in a decorator from California to furnish the Oval Office (the Place where the business of our country is done in the White House.) Then they were so proud of it they replicated it in the Nixon Library in Fullerton California. It is simply awful/terrible. I shuddered at the sight. Compare that was Jackie Kennedy who took a run-down White House and called in Museum Heads and International Furniture Experts to fix it. Not a decorator, I suspect, in the mix. Or if one existed, they deferred to taste-makers of great reputation.
Or take the Kennedy Cabinet. Not a yes-man in the herd. It was a time of challenge and ferment, and it was exciting after Eisenhower. When I met Mamie Eisenhower she was mainly interested in lipstick shades. Not a good sign.
Well, darlings, I'm sure I'm taxing your interest. What do you care about Camelot and who in ned was Mamie Eisenhower? Find out, and you'll grow big and strong. And informed.

Loving all of you
Grandma Letty