Sex and Turkeys

You can't turn on any news program without hearing about sex.  It is disheartening to hear what goes on with such beloved icons as Charlie Rose or Kevin Spacey.  There must be soul-searching all over Congress....surely a good percentage of those high and mighty representatives have some hanky panky in their history and now that women, after so long, are being believed they are tentatively coming forward and the stories are slowly coming out.

It appears the only person who does not believe the women is #45, who says Moore says he didn't do it and he must be believed.  BS.

But I'm having such a difficult time about Al Franken.  I was heartsick to hear the accusation against him and waited to hear more women come forth.  While waiting I examined the lewd photo and, as a photographer, I looked at it closely and saw that his hands are hovering over her breasts, they are not on her breasts, which I found reassuring. I also realized that they were on a comedy tour and the kiss, while stupid and ill-advised didn't rise to the level of dating teenagers, or grabbing pussies, or rape or any of the other accusations that have come up about other big names.

So the jury is out on my opinion of Al Franken, who has obviously lost his opportunity to run for president (though if #45 is any indication, sexual misconduct isn't an automatic show stopper), but I felt better when I read that 36 women involved in Saturday Night Live, whether stars or production people signed a statement which reads, in part,

What Al did was stupid and foolish, and we think it was appropriate for him to apologize to Ms Tweeden, and to the public. In our experience, we know Al as a devoted and dedicated family man, a wonderful comedic performer, and an honorable public servant.

A second accuser has now come forth, saying that he grabbed her butt while they posed for a photo.  And I don't excuse that.  Again, how stupid can you be....but at the time he made his living as a comedian and it was something funny to do in an age where nobody gave it a second thought.

If nothing else does it rise to the level of the other men who have been accused of everything from pedophilia or rape?

There is a very thought-provoking article written by feminist S. Novi who is also having difficulties knowing what to think of Franken.  I really encourage people to read it.  She doesn't excuse anything that he has been accused of doing, but offers another way to look at it.

Let me say right up front that as a woman and a life-long feminist, I absolutely support women coming forward when there have been sexual assaults or abuse. There has been a history of demeaning women in both the courtroom and life so that most refused to put themselves through the process and simply remained quiet. However, this situation is quite a bit different and it requires that we step back and view this with a lens of logic. The fact is that Franken doesn’t have a history of demeaning women, in fact it is the opposite.

I had a disagreement yesterday with someone with whom I have been in agreement about politics for years.  She is adamant that Franken is a disgusting human being and she wants nothing more to do with him.  When I pointed out the photos of the woman grabbing a guy's butt on the same tour, she snapped "Oh...so now they are slut-shaming."  I don't consider her a slut, nor do I 100% consider Franken on a par with the other molesters who have been accused.  I consider this a comedy tour where bawdy things are commonplace.

In her defense, she is running this through a colleague she respected, who turned out to have a hidden history that included sexual misconduct.  I can't be that black and white.  I don't in any way condone the actions of which Franken has been accused, but I just can't write him off.  

I wait and watch and see where it all goes from here.  I will be very disappointed if a legion of other women come out with new accusations.

In the meantime I am nothing but disgusted by the sexual abuser in the White House, who seems to prefer to support a pedophile for Senate than risk the election of a Democrat.  But then he disgusts me on most days, so why is today different from any other day?

But speaking of turkeys.....

Yesterday I did my big Thanksgiving shopping and enjoyed the choices I had for the main course.

Since there will only be 3 of us for dinner (assuming we can convince my mother to come out to the house), I looked for a smaller turkey, remembering the time I cooked a 31 lb turkey for 24 people.  I managed to find an 18 lb turkey and will be brining it today.  

With only 3 of us, and planning a very simple menu, I was surprised to see that the tag come to $177.  But I hope I have everything and though I have successfully cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for 50 years and though our only guest will be my mother, I find I am still nervous about getting it all right.

Happy Thanksgiving all!!!!

Never Too Late

It appears that being 71 and female is no deterrent to having the sexual adventure of my dreams.  This came for me today:

Hi my sexual friend!
How are you? How do you feel?
It is sure that you are surprised to this letter, I am the beautiful, kind and sexy girl, my name Irina
I work in insurance company. To me 26 years. I in search of the man.
I am the lonely girl who loves sex and trips on the world. You very much were pleasant to me and I want to spend with you unforgettable nights. I want to come to you to the country specially to have with you sex. Darling I want to discuss my trip to you. I want to invite you to a site where we will be able to talk and exchange phone numbers. On this site there are my photos and video. It is a free site and on it it is very easy to be registered. I will wait for you on a site for further correspondence. And what to discuss our meeting.
I forgot to tell you the site address. Site THECASUALMEETING.BIZ my nick Kissangel
I ask you be registered as soon as possible. I want to meet you as soon as possible. On it I will finish the letter to you. Bye.

p/s You very strongly are pleasant to me and I am ready on any acts for the sake of you.

What is interesting is that until I copied the e-mail and posted it here, I did not see (it was invisible on the e-mail) a string of tiny letters imbedded between the body of the letter and the P.S.

fahl fcmroc bdvk jsoeb jkhwtm fuueggbpds fzwtzyhnk bsmfyzfpp ghwxld poynhw rysurn luqmfx

(I am putting spaces between groups of letters so as not to pass along the string as I post this.  I'm sure someone can explain what the string may mean and how it has now infected my computer because I made the mistake of reading the e-mail, the kind that usually my spam filter picks up).

I admit I am flattered to find myself so desirable that age, gender, and appearance apparently is no deterrent to Irina and that she finds me "very strongly pleasant."  I was tempted to immediately to go to TheCasualMeeting.Biz site and check her out and send a torrid love note from her Kissangel, but it is warm today and I was sleepy and needed my afternoon nap, so instead I picked up my cane, limped down the hall, put my thick granny glasses on the table, and my strongly pleasant body fell into a nice old folks' nap.

But speaking of sex, my review of Grease came out today.   Grease has been around for many years and nowadays it is popular with summer music festivals and high school productions.  I want to hate the show, but it's too infectious, with sprightly music, familiar tunes, great choreography and a likeable cast.

Musicals are fraught with negative overtones.  In South Pacific, for example, we have xenophobia and sex trafficing.  Bloody Mary is willing to sell her young daughter to an American serviceman, who in turn rejects her (after having sex with her) because his family would never accept a Polynesian daugher-in-law.  At the same time, nurse Nellie is in love with plantation owner, Emile Debeq, but can't marry him because she finds out he was married to a polynesian and has mixed race children.  

In Oklahoma, Curly kills bad guy Judd Fry, but nobody liked him anyway, so they hold a sham trial on the spot and let let Curly off so he can go on his honeymoon.

Harold Hill in The Music Man is a traveling salesman with plans to swindle everyone in town and who, if other salesmen are to be believed, has a girl in every town and has "taken it away from every one of them." Yet Marian falls for him even though she knows he's a bad guy.

The list goes on and on, but in these other musicals, in the end virtue is triumphant.  Nellie comes to love Emile's kids, Lt. Cable suffers from remorse and gives us the haunting "You have to be taught" about inbred prejudice.  Harold changes his stripes, and while Curly never really gets any punishment in his part of Judd's death, we know he's really a good guy and we have a new state to celebrate, so let's get to the finale.

In Grease, however, the message is that a good girl, with nice moral values can only be one of the group and win the guy if she become a slut.   And everyone, including the audience, is happy about it.

In thinking of the things on which Sandy compromises her principles, she starts to smoke, drink, wear skin tight clothes, have big hair and pierce her ears.   I wonder how many people realize what a big deal the ear piercing thing was.

I went to a Catholic school and we knew that only "bad" girls had pierced ears.  In fact that messsage was so strongly etched in my mind that even now, I can still remember the day I looked across the classroom at Patty, the redhead who probably came from a poor family (if I look at her with 2014 eyes) and saw that she had had her ears pierced.  She wasn't a popular girl, but she had pierced ears.  We were probably in the 7th or 8th grade.  I didn't know really what a "bad girl" was, but Patty now was one of them and I don't remember ever playing with her after that, because she was a bad girl.

I had my ears pierced in 1967, long after Patty did, and at a time when pierced ears were more accepted.  I loved wearing earrings and thought this would be an easier way of not losing them.  And there were so many cute earrings out there for people with holes in their heads.  But that whole "bad girl" image was still imbedded in my mind and so I remember taking Ned and Jeri to my parents' house and asking them to babysit while I went downtown to "shop."  I was going to have my ears pierced and I still felt naughty doing it and embarrassed to let my parents know ahead of time.

The experience went along with the feeling.  I was taken to the back of the jewelry store and up some dark stairs to a room above the store.  There was a man over in a corner sitting there and he pierced my ears for me, but it felt, on some level, liking going in for an abortion.  And then I had to face going back to my parents and confessing what I had done.  I can't remember their reaction, but I remember being nervous about it.

I have never regretted the decision to have my ears pierced, but when I see Grease, I remember what a huge thing it was and how kids in that era were viewed if they did have pierced ears, something that today's kids, most of whom have their ears pierced routinely, don't even know about.

I wonder how Irina feels about women with pierced ears....

Day 19:  Happiness is the first basil harvest, making pesto, and putting it on spaghetti