Missed Opportunities

I practically cried when Walt opened the box this evening.

I only remember feeling like this once before.  When Jeri was born, I was looking forward to her being old enough to have a tea party with.  Sometime after her first birthday, I asked my mother if she could give me my old tea set, which I thought she had been keeping for me.  The set had originally belonged to my mother and I remember how special it was.  How it sat in its own box covered with silver paper and how we only used it on special occasions, when my mother would fix hot chocolate and home made cookies and would sit with my sister and myself while we had our tea party.  I couldn't wait to do that with Jeri.

Only she swore she did not have the tea set.  She had given it to me, she insisted, and I must have lost it.

I gradually got over it, berating myself for having lost this precious memory of my childhood.  And then one day, I was sitting in my mothers house in Terra Linda and I looked up on top of her dish cabinet and there was the silver box!  I opened it and there was the tea set.  Jeri was an adult now, but I offered it to Laurel for the girls.  However she had her own tea set that had belonged to HER grandmother an she wasn't interested.  But in 2013, I decided to give it to the girls for Christmas and that year we had our tea party.

Forty-five years after the fact I finally had my tea party with Jeri...and with my granddaughters.  I know it wasn't anywhere near as moving for them as it was for me...and for all I know the dishes have been thrown out now, but I did have one tea party.  I still bemoan the missed opportunity to have that special memory with Jeri.

The other thing I longed to share with our kids were the "red books," a set of seven books my parents got for me when I was a baby.  It had poems, nursery rhymes, short stories and, in the later editions, longer stories.  When I was young, we had no TV, no videos, no movies.  Before I was old enough to go to the library by myself, I had the red books and I devoured them. They brought me adventure, fantasy, and magic.  I hoped to share some of that with our kids.  But the books "disappeared" in our house.  I thought for sure they would turn up when we moved to Davis, but they did not.  Off and on over the years, I tried to find the "red books," to no avail.

This week Marta's office is having a book drive and she wanted to know if we had any books to donate.  I told her my office was all out of donatable books, but I'm sure Walt could fill a box for her and Ned could pick them up when he comes for my mother's birthday lunch.

Tonight Walt proudly said he had filled not one, but five boxes and started to list some of the books in the donation box including the "Book Trails" series.  He said he didn't remember whether those had been my books of his as a kid.  I had him pull them out of the donation box and there they were....the red books!

I asked where he found them and he said that they had been in the linen closet.  All these years.  It's 50 years too late and the stories are old fashioned and I'm sure they won't interest Brianna and Lacie, so I will probably put them back in the donation box, and maybe some other mother will find them and read them to her kids.  But I get teary-eyed thinking of the missed opportunities to share those beloved stories of my childhood with my own children. They were in the linen closet all those years.....

But before I let them go, I had to revisit some of my favorite friends like

The little doggies were Brownie, Laddie and Bobs.

THE KING'S CREAM	THE GREEDY CAT

Maybe I won't give them away with this box of donations.  Maybe the girls will come back before they are too old for them.  Maybe I can share a little with them.

Or maybe I'll cut them up and use them for pocket letters.....

Scott Adams is Insane

I worked at the hospital today, kind of a split shift.  It's a holiday and we didn't have to work, but I thought I would work from middle-morning to middle-afternoon.  You get extra hours if you work on a holiday and I had nothing to do anyway, so..

.

It was very, very quiet.  We didn't even have any babies born.  The gift shop was closed.  Very few patients came through the front door.  The only notable guy at the information desk asked me where billing was and I told him.  He started off down the hall and a nurse asked him to "take those off because they are spreading water on the floor."  Since I only see from about mid-chest up at the desk, I didn't know what she was talking about, so I snuck a look while he walked down the hall and he was walking barefoot.  It turned out he had been wearing plastic bags with ice on his feet!  I don't have a clue why.

Most of the medical offices were closed, so there weren't even many people coming into the cafeteria at lunch time and I don't think they actually cooked a hot meal.  The gift shop was also closed.

With it being so quiet, I had lots of time to read and I finished my book, "Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brains," by Scott Adams, the cartoonist who creates Dilbert.  This is a book of over 150 pieces, I think from his Blog. Reviews on the back cover compare him to Dave Barry and say he is almost as funny. I have read Dave Barry and he's OK, but I've never found him laugh out loud funny, which I did with Adams' book, many times in the 150+ pieces, on everything from lunar real estate to serial killers, not to mention politics, religion, dating, underwear, alien life, and the menace of car singing.

One that had me actually chortling out loud today was in a chapter called "My History Learning."  I'm going to quote a long section here and assume that it is not copyright violation, since I am giving all credit to Adams and the title of his book and, heck, maybe this will encourage you to buy a book, in which case I should be given credit, not opprobrium.

It should be pointed out that Adams is an atheist so the blasphemy some will shout can be understood.

The older the story, the less likely it's accurate.  That's why it's understandable that there is a lot of controversy about the historical accuracy of the Bible.  To me, it comes down to one question:  Where are all the petrified Jesus turds?

It is my understanding that Jesus ate and drank just like regular people. Ipso facto, there must have been about nine thousand Jesus turds produced during his Earth phase.  You can't tell me that his followers wouldn't follow him behind a rock every time he squeezed out a streamer and put it in a little box to save.  Best of all, his shit wouldn't stink!  If you made a hat out of it you'd probably be instantly cured of diseases.  I'm not much of a collector, and I don't care for knickknacks, but even I would keep the son of God's turd in a glass container on the mantel,  it would be a great conversation piece "This one was right after the Sermon on the Mount.  You an still see some bits of fig.

......

You might argue that turds would decay over time.  But you're thinking of regular turds, not holy shit.,,,I can see how historians might have lost track of Jesus' robe.  There was only one of those.  But how do you misplace nine thousand turds?

He also had a great comment on voting, which is scarily true:

We're judging how a candidate will handle a nuclear crisis by how well his staff creates campaign ads.  It's a completely nonsensical process.

I also loved a quote on one of the 4 pages of short quotes in the back of the book.

In case you ever consider getting off caffeine yourself, let me explain the process.  you begin by sitting motionless in a desk chair.  Then you just keep doing that forever because life has no meaning.

He frequently gives political commentary, without taking sides, like "either Christianity or Islam is completely and utterly wrong. The beliefs are mutually exclusive. Muslims believe all Christians will burn in Hell. Christians believe that the Koran is fiction. They both can't be right. (They could obviously both be wrong if the Heaven's Gate guys turn out to have it right.)"

If you are a Dave Barry fan, I guarantee you will love Scott Adams.  I'm gong to have to hope someone else brings in one more of his books to Logos some time! 

When I left Sutter at 2:30, all five of the security guards were sitting around the lobby shooting the breeze because there was nothing else to do.

I drove down to Fairfield to get my mother a birthday present.  You can't buy her anything these days, but she does love candy and See's was always our favorite.  There is a See's store in Fairfield and I expected it to be quick trip down, forgetting that it is the end of a 3 days weekend, and I got caught in horrendous traffic.  

But I did buy a one pound box of assorted chocolates and driving home in the other direction wasn't bad at all (nobody wants to spend a holiday weekend in San Francisco, when they could go to Lake Tahoe, or somewhere else in the mountains.  Now tomorrow I'll see if I can pick up a small cake and on Wednesday we will celebrate her 97th birthday, whether she does or not.

Jim and My Father

Jim's brother passed by Logos the other day.

At least I think it was Jim's brother.  I don't know him at all, but he has been in a wheelchair for as long as I've known "of" him and I see him wheeling himself all over town.  He must have the strongest upper body of anybody in town.

Jim and his brother were kids who lived on our block here in Davis.  Jim was the school bully and our kids had many unpleasant encounters with him.  We just knew to avoid him.

One night my parents were here for dinner.  It was a dark night and the doorbell rang.  Jim was at the door.

He was frantic, said his parents were fighting and asked us to please call the police.  "Tell them it's Jim.  They know me," he said.  To this day that is one of the saddest things I ever heard a kid say.

Here was this kid who wasn't a bully this time; he was a scared kid trying to save his mother from an abusive father.  

My father took him into his lap and I have never heard him so loving, so soothing--not before, not after.  It showed me a side that I had never heard before--and I was an adult with children of my own.

I think it made me realize how much he really wanted a son and how he didn't know how to act with daughters.

When I think back over his concern for Jim, it makes me wonder if he himself was a bullied child.  He wore big black-rimmed glasses as a kid...don't they often make fun of kids with glasses?  I don't remember his ever talking about friends in either grammar school or high school.  He often talked about how if he saw someone he knew walking down the street, he would cross the street so he didn't have to encounter them.

Heck, this was a kid who ate raw onions for lunch and was once kicked out of class for sneaking bites of his onion in class.

He was obsessed with body building and our basement was filled with exercise equipment and exercise magazines.

Despite his dedication to exercise and especially weight lifting he was never muscle bound...and I honestly don't ever remember seeing him working out.  It all happened down in the basement.  Would he have shared his love for body building with a son?  When Ned was interested in body building in grammar school, my father was ecstatic and gave him lots of magazines and I think even gave him some small weights to start with.

But I think of the things he loved ... like boxing.  The heavier weight combatants the better.  He watched every Gillette boxing match broadcast on TV, something my mother hated and Karen and I only saw in passing.  How happy he would have been to have had a son to share that with.  He loved it when someone got a direct hit and maybe even drew blood.

I remember he took me to one football game, when the San Francisco team was then the Seals.  I don't think he ever took me again.  Would he have been at the stadium every weekend with a son?  Did he assume that because I was a girl I wasn't interested?  I think of the wonderful photos of Tom and Brianna cheering the 49ers.

My father missed a lot by making unwarranted assumptions.  He enjoyed his grandchildren, but as they got into their teen years, he pulled back, telling me that he couldn't relate to them because they just liked rock and he hated rock music. He never asked them, of course. It was not until that magical Christmas the year before he died when he discovered that not only did the kids like jazz, but they could play it too. "Whoever thought I would be having a jam session with my grandchildren?" he said, his face glowing from the excitement of it all.

The police finally came in answer to our call regarding the violence at Jim's house and Jim went home again.  It was never mentioned afterwards. We never saw him at our house again.  But he also never bullied our kids again.

I felt much softer toward him, thinking of the hell that he must be enduring at home.

Sunday Stealing

What’s the meaning or inspiration of your blog’s title? 

It's from the lyrics to a song that my kids' band, Lawsuit, sang back in the 1980/90s.  After our son David died in 1996, all I could think of was these lyrics

Funny the world in a world all alone
I feel like I've lost everything that I own
Funny the funnies aren't funny any more.
Funny the tears as they fall from my eyes
There are two kinds of tears--
one from truth, one from lies
There's a broken soldier,
who's going home.

What do you consider your biggest strength? 

I don't fall apart in an emergency.  Yet.

What do you consider your biggest weakness? 

Oh...too many to list!

Tell us why we should like your favorite band. 

Well, it's too late now because Lawsuit disbanded in 1996, but they were and still are my favorite band.  You can get an example here.

This was a 1996 concert honoring our son David, who had died in May.  The singer is our son Paul (who would die in 1999), the drummer is son Ned, the girl in the hat doing backup singing is Ned's wife and the girl on the saxophone is our daughter Jeri.  This is perhaps not my favorite song, but it shows what an...uh...eclectic/weird band they could be.

Who is your favorite model of all-time? Why? 

Model?  I don't know models.  The only one I can name is Heidi Klum and she drives me nuts.

Does it bother you when people talk about their pets? Why? 

Of course not.  I am a pet person and love hearing about others' experiences.

Tell us about your favorite holiday. 

I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, though not what we have now, which is so disjointed because we are so scattered and too many have died.  When the kids were growing up, we went to my mother-in-law's condo at Lake Tahoe and it was a pot luck (so there was no pressure on a single cook).  My son Tom, who has become an excellent cook, always made Baked Alaska and after dinner we played charades, which was so funny with Walt's mother, who was in her 80s at the time and never did get the idea of not speaking.  I miss those days so much.

What was the last fabulous meal that you ate? Where were you?

Hmmm....we don't eat out all that much, but earlier this year we went to The Dead Fish restaurant in Crockett, CA, which has great crab and a beautiful view as well. 

What’s your lucky number and why? 

It's always been 7 and I don't have a clue why.  It's never brought me any luck!

What are five things you hate? 

1.  Donald Trump
2. The ugliness of this election
3. Any kind of child abuse/molestation
4. Elephant slaughter for ivory
5. Dementia

What are five things you love? 

1. My family
2. My dogs
3. Fog and rain
4. NCIS reruns
5. Dungeness crab

Tell us a secret you can because other than us, who’ll read this anyway? 

I am a paid assassin for the CIA.  You won't tell anyone, will you?  (I saw The Bourne Supremacy last night)

What is the favorite body feature of yourself? 

For so many years it was my hair.  It was thick and naturally curly/wavy.  Then as I got older, it started thinning and I hated it.  Then I had my head shaved to raise money for children's cancer and when it grew back, the thickness and curl came back and now, if I keep it short, I love it again.

Is there a tattoo that you want? If you don’t have one, gun-to-your-head so you have to get one, what would it be? 

It would definitely take a gun to my head to have me get one, but if I absolutely HAVE to, maybe the comedy/tragedy masks, since I'm a theater critic. A small comedy/tragedy mask.

What do you love about yourself? What do you hate about yourself? Who is someone you miss?

I guess I love that I am willing to help anybody if it's within my ability.  I hate that I have no interest in exercise or diet. (I guess I don't really hate it all that much, or I'd make a greater effort.) I miss my two sons (who died in 1996 and 1999) and my two cousins.  I also miss my mother the way she used to be, not the demented person she is today.

Saturday 9

It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World

Welcome to Saturday: 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme!

Saturday 9: It's a Man's Man's Man's World (1966)


Since Labor Day was introduced to celebrate the American worker, we are highlighting the hardest working man in show business: James Brown. Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.


1) Before he was able to support himself as a musician, James Brown shined shoes, boxed, picked peanuts and delivered groceries. He admitted he didn't enjoy any of those jobs. What was your least favorite job? That would have to be a summer job, when I was just out of 8th grade.  I worked in a medical laboratory washing bloody test  tubes.  That wasn't so bad, but the poopy slides gagged me every time.

2) What job have you enjoyed the most?
I started out as secretary to 3 physics professors at the University of California, Berkeley.  By the time I left the job (to have a baby), one of the professors had retired and the other moved his office up to the Radiation lab, so I was just a private secretary for a man who has remained my good friend since I left the job in 1966.  He wrote a textbook while I was there and I typed it three times on an IBM typewriter with interchangeable keys for math symbols (this was in the days before the Selectric).  The book is apparently still in use today and has been translated into 10 languages.

3) James loved performing and in the mid-60s, played 335-350 dates/year. Do you have time off this weekend? Or will you be working?
I have time off 24/7, since I am retired.

4) With that grueling schedule, James spent a lot of time on the road. Do you enjoy traveling and staying in hotels? Or are you a homebody who prefers to sleep in your own bed?
I enjoy traveling, but hate hotels, even ritzy ones.  I am never comfortable in hotel beds and am always very happy to be home.

5) While Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce, millions of Baby Boomers are still part of American labor. Do you think it's easy or hard for people of different generations to work together? Or don't you think age matters?
It's never been a problem for me.

6) 72% of employers report that they give their employees sick days. Tell us about a time when you called in sick, but weren't. 
I can't think of one.  I am sure I have done it, but not often.  I even went to work as a receptionist when I had zero voice and my boss's wife had to come and answer the phone for me.

7) According to the 2010 Census, 5.9 million Americans regularly work from home. Is working from home something you have/you would enjoy? Or do you benefit from interaction with coworkers?
The one thing I miss about working in an office is the camaraderie of co-workers.  I work as a theater critic now, but it's a job I do from home.  I've discovered that when you leave a job, you leave your friends behind you.  At least that has been the case for me, no matter how much I try to keep the friendships going.
 
8) 12% of workers report they prefer to report for work early -- before 7:00 AM -- so they can get more done. Are you a morning person?
I used to be a morning person but now I find I sleep later and later (8 a.m., which is very late for me) and it takes me longer to get started.  When I was working, I often went to work early but now at my volunteer jobs, I always choose time slot that start in the afternoon.

9) The NFL season starts on September 8. How do you think your team will do this year?
Well, because I am a San Francisco native, I am a 49er fan, but I don't follow football all that closely so I only pay attention if they are in the running for the SuperBowl.  One of my sons, however, is a 49er faithful and has raised his daughters to share his love of the 49ers.

Today at Logos

Well, the axe fell yesterday.  The e-mail came before I left for Logos:

Peter and I will be giving up our ownership of Logos Books when our lease expires, at the end of January 2017.  At this time we are looking for someone interested in continuing Logos as a used books store serving the Davis community.  As you can all imagine, this has been a difficult decision.  However, we feel that it is the right one for a variety of circumstances – not least of which may be our creaking backs from hauling around books! 

So you only have five more months of "Today at Logos" to get through.  I don't know what the future of the book store is, if they will find someone to take it over, if it will continue to raise money for charity (>$20,000 so far for Doctors without Borders and Save the Children), but when Susan and Peter quit, I will too.  As Susan said to me recently, "You'll probably be glad to have your Thursdays back."  And...yeah...I will. I still enjoy my time there and the "regulars," as well as meeting old friends I haven't seen in years, but I will be glad to have my Thursdays back. This volunteering jazz cuts into my pocket letter making time!

So I arrived and it was the guy who always moves the cash register was working.  I don't know why he does that.  First thing I have to do is rearrange the whole desk.  He moves the cash register, he moves the credit card machine, and everything is just "off." It must take me three whole minutes to rearrange the desk after he leaves.

I talked with him bout the ending of Logos and he kept asking me all these questions about what Susan and Peter are going to do and I kept telling him all I knew was what was in the e-mail.  He finally left.

The first customer was looking for a book by Peter Egen, who apparently writes book about bicycles and motorcycles, but then writes essays too.  I directed him to the travel and the adventure sections, but no luck.

A black woman with a hijab looked through bargain books and then wandered around the store.  She didn't buy anything, but turned and gave me a big smile when she left.

An old couple came in.  He was tall, but stooped over his walker.  He had jowls that hung like a bloodhound and a baseball cap from the Davis Farmers Market. His mouth was making strange movements as if he were moving false teeth around inside his lips. I don't think they bought anything.

A Richard Dreyfus-type with an Acubra-type hat came in and bought a bargain book.  He asked "where's the cute little girl" (Sandy's granddaughter), with whom he seemed quite taken.

A middle aged man bought a Sherlock Holmes which cost $4.88 and but only had $4.78, so I told him I was easy and he could just pay that.

A young guy came in looking for a specific Tolkien book and was thrilled to find three different books and told me that he had "cleaned out our Tolkien section

A couple came in and after looking around for awhile, they bought a book of contemporary fiction and a book about Richard Feynman.  I assumed one book was for her and one was for him.

A chatty woman wearing a shirt with Grumpy and "God bless and have a wonderful day...somewhere else" on it.  She bought six bargain books and two humor books including one called "Why Dogs Eat Poop."  She said she was "almost 70" and had a juicy tale to tell about a friend whose husband ("a scrawny thing") was cheating on her.

A kid came in with a violin bow.  I told him he's lost his violin and apparently he was on his way to a violin lesson and didn't have his own violin.  His mother had a helper dog...don't know if it was for her or in training, since she didn't seem to need the kind of harness-for-the-blind that the dog was wearing.  But I didn't try to pet him because I figured he was working.

The kid was reading a graphic novel of Dr. Who when he had to leave for his lesson.  He said he would be back after his lesson to buy it, but never returned.

A tall guy bought a book of poetry.

The son of our kids' music teacher came in again--he does frequently--and said he was "just doing my usual round."  He didn't find anything interesting today.

A guy wearing a shirt with a picture of Mt. Kilimanjaro on the front and "if you can't drink it, climb it" on the back bought a contemporary fiction and a book of short stories.

A guy bought 6 books on mechanics, for my largest sale of $34.64.

A woman came in looking for a women with a red and black striped coat.  Thanks to these notes, I know for sure that she had not been in Logos.

A Cal Aggie Flyers instructor with Ryan Lochte hair was looking for books on health, but didn't find what he was looking for.

Bruce browsed the bargain books, but didn't choose any.  He came in and looked through the history section for a while and didn't buy anything, but told me goodbye when he left.  I finally was able to get a photo of him (from the back) to give you and idea of the outfit he wears all the time.  You can see the hat on his head.  It has a blue brim and, yes, he made it himself.

At 5:30 p.m., the runners passed by.  I don't know where they start but they jog past the store every day, Susan says.

A woman was looking through a shelf of books and pulled one book out and put it back again.  It was perfect for Phil, so after she left, I bought it for Phil for Christmas.

Walt picked me up and we came home, where I cooked a Blue Angel meal (quesadillas tonight) for dinner.

Cough, Cough

I sit here at 6 a.m., water bottle by my side, coffee brewing, Riccola sugarless throat lozenges at the ready, and the cough never ending.

There were only two people in the world, Walt and my mother (now only one) who don't give me a hard time about this cough because it seems to be an annual thing.  Every year around this time, I develop "the cough."  It starts with a tickle and builds to such a wracking cough that it sometimes feels like it reaches down into my toes to pull up the tickle through every organ in my body.

It's not a productive cough.  It's just a dry, hacking cough that robs me of sleep and makes me sound like I'm running my own T.B. ward.

It settles in for a couple of weeks and then, just as suddenly as it came, it leaves.

You can almost set your watch by it.  Yet I forget every year and about 3 days into this endless coughing, I am reading back over an entry in "Today in My History" and find that x years ago, I was complaining about the same thing.

My mother watched me go through it throughout my childhood, I think, and Walt has been living with it for 51 years.  My mother, of course, has now forgotten that.

I hate to go out in public because people thing I'm dying and I really hate to go to shows without a bag of Riccola (the only remedy that seems to work) in my purse.  But really it is nothing.  Just my body having a little fun at my expense and I know it will be gone soon.  In the meantime, no need to remind me to drink water.  I'm drowning in it.

The problem with "the cough," though is that it really wears you down. Yesterday I was sitting here at the desk trying to write an article when all of a sudden I realized that I had to take a nap.  Now.  I staggered to the recliner, cuddled up under the quilt, and was asleep instantly, for the next hour and a half.

I went to sleep at 10:30 last night -- very, very early for me -- and again, was asleep right away. 

Of course when I go to sleep that early, I am also awake early and so at 4 a.m., I was watching the Rachel Maddow late report that I had recorded.  Usually the late report is just a rerun of her earlier prime time broadcast, but following Trump's vitriolic immigration rally in Arizona yesterday, she was had announced that she would be live for the late report.

I turned it on and thought I would fall asleep, but I didn't.  Her historical perspective on what is happening in this country right now was fascinating -- how the Whig Party had been such a ruling party for so long, but fell apart around the time Lincoln was becoming active in politics (and thus was a member of the early Republican party)

The hue and cry back then was against the Catholics and how they were ruining the country and how we should get those dirty Catholics out of here.  I'd never heard that before.

It seems that throughout our history in this country we have always needed someone to hate.  Rachel pointed out that the anti-Catholic movement swept across the country, but by the time it got to California, it was no longer the dirty Catholics who were to blame for everything, but the dirty Chinese.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Did we ever really believe it, or is that Emma Lazarus poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty just a big joke?

I watched Trump in front of that wall of American flags talking about all those criminal immigrants and how he would rid the country of 2 million of them in this first hour as president.  And the 11 million who would be gone ... and how we won't just take them "across the border" but "far away" where they can't turn around and re-enter right away.

Humanity aside, I want him to explain the process and where the money for all this deportation is going to come from.

I watched him with the Mexican president talking about the friendship between the two countries and then heard the vitriol about that damn wall and how Mexico will pay for it, though Nieto insists he told Trump his country will not pay for a wall.  (One of them is lying, since Trump says they never discussed payment for the wall.  Since this is the cornerstone of Trump's campaign, it is implausible that the cost of the wall did not come up).

Is Trump leading the way for the dissolution of the Republican party the way the anti-Catholic movement and disagreement over slavery was part of the dissolution of the Whig Party?

I have started watching Morning Joe on MSNBC when I wake up around 3 or so.  I turned it on originally because it was one of the best soporifics around.  Five minutes into the show and I'm out like a light.  However, in the last few days, as Trump has become more and more outrageous (can he get more outrageous?) I watch host Joe Scarborough and especially co-host Mika Brzezinski struck literally speechless and Brzezinski with her head down, shaking her head and murmuring "I just don't know what to say."

Donald Trump has changed the face of this country.  No matter what the results of the election are, he has given permission for all of the far radical right to come out of the closet.  The KKK, Skinheads, Neo Nazis and your run of the mill bigots have all found legitimacy in the Trump candidacy and I suspect that if Trump does not win the election, they will not go back into their dark corners again but will continue to feel comfortable to, as I saw a recent parade of truck drivers recently, yell things like "Death to all ni**ers," and "There's a tree that looks good for hanging a "ni**er."  Trump's acceptance of these people into his faithful has been not only disgusting, but also downright scary.

And if Trump does win the presidency...I shudder.

I thought this morning that I feel like the old guy in that beer garden scene in the movie Cabaret, with the sweet faced Arian boy singing a sweet song called "Tomorrow belongs to me" which gets more and more strident until the camera pans out and he's in a uniform with a swastika on his arm and giving a heil Hitler salute.  The old guy just sits there eating his soup, with a disgusted look on his face, while everyone else is stirred by the rhetoric, and stand to give their own salute in response to the song.