He Thinks He's Wolf Blitzer

We're in a free motel room in Old Town San Diego and Barack is on the TV again. He monopolized the networks night before last, then appeared this morning to hype the outline (!) of his budget. At this rate, he'll be fulfilling my prognostication that he have his own network. Except he's gone one better: He has them all.
Why a free motel room you ask? My dear husband has amassed 32,100 Reward Points after a lifetime spent in Best Western motels. This room ate up 32,000. So much for 50 years of effort.
Does it really go by all in a wink? Lesson learned.
Anyhow, I digress. Only Wolf Blitzer used up this much air time. Now, John King does Sunday but Wolf owns TV weekdays. In eight years, he should run for President.

It Was Just a Matter of Time

Kids:

Grandma Letty has just finished her first e-book. Not for herself, but for hire. She got the assignment from a site for freelancers and since there are currently 9000 unemployed newspaper people, she stood little chance of working. But fortune smiled---sort of. Her rate in the old, prosperous days was 25 cents a word. After all, she is a pro. You know what she worked for on this project? A penny a word. The depression is really here.

I guess I'm lucky to work at home and get pennies for my efforts but it was a lot of fun to sit in a city room and trade repostes (look it up) with other people.

Here's the awful part: the job site had so many rules and regulations and submissions and just annoying stuff that I spent more time learning how to use it than I did writing a 15,000-word book in three days. I'll bet a whole day went for mastering the regulations. So much for the artiste, doncha know.

Despite my site ineptness, I got a great letter of recommendation and a promise to hire me many times again for this kind of thing. That's encouraging. Besides, I liked everything about it but the administration.

Here's the funny part: it was an e-book on dog training! A hefty batch of research and recalls about Gideon, our last dog, and Alpha, my first presented color. At least I thought so.

What a New Year

Dears:
Your probably weren't aware that newspapers are in trouble; venerable ones are in bankrupsy and others are shrinking their content and laying off editorial staff, which, translated, means "writers." I am one of them. My paper didn't publish this week or won't next for lack of funds.
Therefore, this week I applied for 5 new jobs for pennies on the dollar of what I'm worth, and the competition was so intense that more than hundreds of talented and capable writers applied, too, for the pittance that was offered.
I won't know for several days if I got any assignments. Meanwhile, I have a good New Years Eve story.
Since John and I live with many, many old people, we all gathered at our clubhouse, turned on CNN (which is three hours ahead in time on satellite), kissed each other and blew horns ( I provided) at 9p.m, because it was midnight in New York and the crystal ball had dropped. Then we went home and went to bed. Good show for old people.
To celebrate a small but vital quarterly payment, we went to our favorite restaurant, ordered the most expensive things on the menu, tipped the piano player $5, and toasted the new year with decaf coffee.
We also charged a trip to Russia. By June, we may have it almost paid off.
We also sent some slippers to Carole because she had coveted Tim's, and you know that's a sin.
I love you all. We're walking around the corner to pork steak and baked beans courtesy of one of our social residents and I'll just wish any soul who reads this a very happy New Year.

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.