Ya Gotta Keep Up

Yesterday I wrote about my new obsession with Morning Joe and my inability to get back to sleep after turning it on at 3 a.m.  I usually switch over to The Today Show at 7 and then background TV for the morning (because I am addicted, you know....)

Yesterday I discovered that it has become important to be aware of the news all day long or you miss things.  Things I found out yesterday:

- First, McMaster, who stood so confidently and strongly in the rose garden and told reporters that the report of Trump giving confidential information to the Russians was absolutely false.  "I was in the room.  It didn't happen," he said.  His next statement after Trump admitted giving confidential information to the Russians ("I am president.  I can do whatever I want") was "OK--it happened, but it wasn't really a big deal."  His next statement was something along the line of "OK, it was a big deal but only because it was leaked to the press." Finally, after it had been revealed that the biggie was that Trump had outed one of our operatives, "'The president didn't even know what country was involved."

- Next we learn that he did and that he had outed an Israeli operative who had infiltrated Isis.

- Then there was a report that Kim Guilfoyle announced she's in interviews to become press secretary. (Does Sean Spicer know about this? Or has he checked his mail for a note form the president?)

- Then I learned that Trump is going to Saudi Arabia to give a speech on Islam.  Well this should be interesting.  I hope someone can get him a graphic novel so he can learn a little about it before the plane lands.  This trip should be interesting.  He's visiting England, where Parliament has voted NOT to allow him to speak to the House of Commons, as very other US Presidents have done, then he goes to Israel, where he has just outed one of their operatives and has stated that the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, is not really a part of Israel, and finally he ends up talking to the Saudis about Islam.  I can hardly wait to read the reports

- Next I heard that Trump is turning on son-in-law Jared.  Is this why we haven't seen anything of Trump's right hand daughter Ivanka lately?  Or is she too busy promoting her clothing line to be Daddy's backup this week?

- I loved his comment at a graduation speech that "No president in history has been treated as badly as I have."  Since he admittedly doesn't read, I assume he has not read a newspaper in the last 20 years.  I suspect Obama, Clinton and Bush would disagree with him! (When interviewed, John McCain said even he has been treated worse than Trump has)

- And then just before we went out to dinner, I learned that Robert Mueller had been appointed Special Counsel.  We were going to a dinner at Woodstock's pizza, which was a fund-raiser for Citizens Who Care, the group Walt has been on the board of for many years.  We sat with another member of the board and his family and then joked "Guess what we're taking about" (Trump, of course), but they had not had their TV on in the previous hour and had not heard of Mueller's appointment.

So see?  If you want to be informed, the headlines change hour by hour. and it behooves you to Be Aware.

Dinner was great.  We rarely go out to dinner in Davis, and never for pizza, so this was my first trip to this restaurant, which has been in Davis longer than we have (we have been here 43 years).  I once was called by some survey taker on pizza parlors and the only pizza place I could think of was Steve's Pizza, where we have eaten rarely when we get a hankering for pizza (or are meeting someone for dinner).

Walt ordered my favorite pizza -- Italian sausage and mushroom.  He added pesto to it and it was amazing

 

We need to get out more!

---

In the morning I went to the dementia support group, which I had not been to in some time.  With the upcoming move of my mother to the Memory Unit on Sunday, I was in need of support and got it in spades.  Everyone seems to think that I'm doing it right, and reassure me that with her level of memory loss it won't take her long to adjust to her new apartment.  Let's hope.

The best part of going to the meeting was that the two leaders work with Davis' consignment store, "All Things Right and Relevant" and are willing to come and pick up the clothes that we are donating and take them to the shop.  

Habitat for Humanity is coming the next day for the furniture and by this time next week, it will all be over and we settle into our new reality.

Why Reading the News Makes Me Cry

15 May 2014

For what it's worth, killing abortion doctors
is not a good thing either!

Is it any wonder I watch so much inane escapist television ?

Back to Reality

The thing about getting away is that you get away.   Away from newspapers, away from TV, away from routines, away from Internet news stories.

Oh there was a newspaper, but I rarely read the Santa Barbara paper because it usually makes me angry.  And there was that humongous television set that Joe and Alice just bought...

...but we tended to visit more than sit and watch TV...especially news on TV.

And Walt would scoff to read that I was away from Internet news stories, especially since I was glued to BarnCam (still waiting for Abbie to birth that baby!), but I didn't follow up on a lot of news stories so I really had a vacation from whatever was going on in the world.

How depressing to come home and start catching up on what I missed.   How depressing, for example, to come home to find out that every. single. Republican. in the House voted against equal pay for women.  What do they tell their mothers, their wives, their girlfriends, their sisters.  What what woman would vote for Republicans after the despicable lack of respect they have shown to women.   But you know that women will vote for them again.

How depressing to read my friend Gabi Clayton's blog about Andrew Waiswa, in Uganda, who is being hunted and at best, if discovered will receive a lengthy sentence for being gay, but is more likely to be beaten to death

I know I will be jailed for seven years, but I can't risk to be lynched by the local mobs and gangs I can easily die if I make any mistake of showing out my face, so am considering to handle over my self to the police, be taken to court and sentenced, if am lucky I will only get 7yrs! If I don't get financial help to get out of Uganda ASAP am taking chances with the police and the Ugandan courts

How depressing to pick up email from Compassion, whom I had contacted after Uganda passed its new Anti-Homosexuality act of 2014.  I really wanted to write to my sponsored child, Shallon, in Uganda, who is 19 years old and could understand such things, but Compassion said I could not discuss it with her and to write and encourage her to study instead.

How depressing to find the country of Brunei is set to roll out a new penal code including death by stoning as punishment for same-sex relations.

How depressing to read Jeb Bush is kind of quietly preparing a run for the White house.

That house in Santa Barbara is starting to look better and better today, as reality starts creeping back into my brain cells again.

Carnage, Chaos, Catastrophe

I will always remember the day of the Columbine shooting.  It was April 20, 1999.  We were all in shock watching the now familiar pictures of children running in fear from their school, the two shooters, the parents in anguish.

I remember it because at 11:30 that night we received word that our son Paul was dead.  The initial report was that he had taken his own life and, searching for reasons to understand the un-understandable, the only precipitating incident that I could find was the Columbine shooting.  He had been severely emotionally affected by violence like that in the past (the particular violent incident I don't remember) and, as unlikely as it was, the shooting was the only thing I could come up with which might have explained what made him so depressed that he would take his own life.

Later, as we began to look at all the evidence, we came to the conclusion that this was just a stupid accident, and nothing he planned (though nothing we could say would convince the coroner of that, and his death is still officially listed as a suicide).  Nobody who knew him, or who had interacted with him in the days surrounding his death could believe that he would have killed himself at that time.

But whatever was in his mind, the last moments of his life, Paul's death and Columbine are forever linked in my mind, so much so that to this day, I can't watch any Columbine retrospectives and when we were in Denver with a group going to see a production of The Last Session in 2000 and most of the group went on a bus tour of the Denver area, which would include a stop at Columbine high school, I chose instead to stay behind and see an extra production of the musical (which turned out to be the very best decision I made).

I didn't know anybody at Columbine, I didn't know any of the children, I have had no interaction with any of the parents or the children at Columbine, but 13 years later, just the name "Columbine" sends a shiver down my spine.

And here we are with a new tragedy to cope with today.  There are homes in Connecticut where Christmas trees are decorated and gifts wrapped with care hiding surprises underneath.  There are stockings waiting to be hung for Santa.   Excited children went off to school this morning and parents waved goodbye as they went to work and nobody had any idea that they would never see each other again, that the stockings would go un-hung and the gifts unwrapped.

The 24/7 news reporters and talking heads are spouting all the same stuff again.  So sad, such a tragedy...broadcasting rumors as fact, bringing in pseudopsychiatrists to analyze the motives of a killer whose name they didn't even know yet.

It has become entirely too familiar.  I don't want tragedy...the death of innocent children and adults...to become ho-hum.  Reality TV that is all too real.  

I heard more than one commentator (and at least one psychiatrist) saying that some of these killers do this kind of thing for the fame, the notoriety, so that their names will join those of all those other famous killers.

THEN WHY CONTINUE TO BROADCAST THE NAME?????

Could we possibly discourage another would-be killer if everybody in the news media said "we've decided not to release the name of any mass murderers."   Sure we could give all the details of the killer's life and the things that may have made up the person that he was and contributed to his decision to slaughter, but keep his bloody name secret.

Everybody knows the names of Dylan Kelbold and Eric Harris...but can anybody name one child killed at Columbine? Or anywhere else where mass killings have occurred?

But we're too thirsty for every ounce of emotion we can wring from a tragedy.  Interview traumatized children about the things they've seen and heard. Now that's a swell thing to do.  

The very worst interview question I heard was a reporter who asked one of the police officers something along the line of "You were in the staging area where the parents were told of the death of their children.  Can you tell us how they're doing?  Can you describe what the scene was like?"

Good God, woman?  What a question.  She didn't get her answer, but she got her money shot, as the officer burst into tears and stammered something about "heartbreaking..." while the camera rolled in for a close-up.   Is nothing sacred?

Of course, I know what Ned is thinking as he reads this -- if people like me didn't watch this stuff, they would have no excuse to keep the cameras rolling. It's like a train wreck.  I couldn't turn the TV off.

In the midst of all the tragedy coming out of Connecticut, report of another tragedy never got any coverage that I found.  Twenty children and one adult were injured in a knife attack outside a primary school in central China.  A woman I pointed this out to was indignant that I would even mention it because those children weren't killed, but merely injured.  And they were in China, where gun laws are more strict, so attacks are done with less lethal weapons.

I want to be optimistic about this world, but I am rapidly losing all hope.

In the meantime, I feel the pain of every single one of those families for the loss of their beautiful children.

Playing Catch-Up

I'm a bad mom. 

Preoccupied Pipers (the band Ned and Marta play in from time to time) was playing in San Francisco last night.  I had intended to go to the show, but found I literally could not move last night.  Walt left the house around 9:30 and I was going to write this journal entry and then go to sleep, but I couldn't even get up to do that.  I ended up going to sleep within minutes after he left, woke up when he got home around 1:30 and thought that after five hours sleep I'd be up the rest of the night, but then had no energy to get up and write this entry then, went right back to sleep and slept through until after 6 a.m. this morning.

I'm not feeling as "jet-laggy" as I did after China, but things like this make me realize that I really am affected by all this flying around!   Yesterday I showed up at the book store to work, not realizing that my day had been shifted this week to Saturday, to let me recover from all the travel.

Getting back to normal involves finding out what has been going on in our absence.  It was the better part of a month news/current event black out and it's weird to start getting back into the groove again.  We got a daily news sheet on the ship, with one page of headline news, one page of sports and one page of business news (and one page of whatever else they needed to complete the stories).  We got CNN, but every time I turned it on, it was yet anther business program, so I gave up trying to find out what was going on in the world through the TV.

Jeri and Phil have a television, but rarely watch it, so it wasn't turned on the whole time we were there and I didn't read the paper while we were there (though Jeri read us the comics each day, which was fun).

So I came home and started watching TV again.

It's weird having so little knowledge of what has been going on in the Olympics.  I usually watch a lot of the events but it has been catch as catch can.  I saw some of the early sports while we were on the ship, but usually ended up finding kayaking.  I knew nothing of kayaking, except that you have to wear a little boat and make it through a complicated course while going through rapids, and keeping the little boat upright.  We saw folks kayaking on the Rhine. I assume they were learning how to right the boat after it tipped over.  Either that or they were very, very bad kayakers.

But I missed all the big emotional moments.  I saw one or two events in gymnastics, but couldn't tell you the name of anybody on our team (except that adorable Gabby Douglas).  I saw girls happy and girls unhappy, but didn't know why.

I saw about a minute of one of Michael Phelps' events.

What upset me when we returned home and I could turn on the shows talking about the events was what upsets me every time we have an Olympics.  The "tragedy" of "only" winning a bronze medal.  What a disaster -- being only the third best person in the entire world.  How can you possibly hold your head up after such an ignominious defeat, especially if you were just seconds behind the winner.  Sometimes you just want to tell commentators to shut up.  

I seemed to see more of the weird stuff -- the controversy over Gabby's hair, what was outlined in that rower's bathing suit during the medal ceremony, Serena Williams' victory dance (really, folks...get a life!).

I found out that we landed a rover on Mars and there was another horrific shooting at a Sikh temple and an attempted shooting at another showing of The Dark Knight.  I kinda sorta knew those things had happened, but really knew very little about them.

And then there was the political scene and back to watching the talking heads dissecting the events surrounding the presidential race.  Char's husband Mike watches FOX news, to find out what folks on the right are hearing and believing.  I do not have that strong a stomach, but going back to MSNBC and realizing that it is as slanted to the left as FOX is to the right is just as bad.  I loved hearing everyone assessing how the Romney campaign is imploding, but realized that those listening to FOX are hearing the same thing about the Obama campaign.  I'm becoming very superstitious.  I don't want to hear how badly Romney is doing because I'm afraid that he's not doing bad enough to convince voters.

I saw an absolutely horrific campaign ad yesterday, about a candidate who, according to this ad, wanted to allow thugs from Mexico into this country.  The pictures were horrific and scary, watching these hard-edged, sneering men in dirty t-shirts moving into your neighborhood.  It took awhile to realize I was watching a cop drama, not a real life Super PAC ad.

I want to get on another ship and not get off until the election is over.  It's too upsetting to watch the daily reporting on who had done what to whom.   A news blackout was actually very nice.

What? Me Worry?

There is a volcano in Iceland spewing volcanic ash into the air and making it difficult for people to travel around the world. "Eyjafjallajökull" looks more like the letters I've been getting in Scrabble lately...and I don't even want to think about trying to pronounce it...but as someone who will soon have to fly over its air space on our way to Helsinki, I've now added "volcanic ash" as something I must worry about.

There are many things to worry about, everything from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the plight of women and children in various African countries, to why Ned is so terribly obsessed with Ryan Seacrest. Such a scary world.

Television shows seem determined to make life scarier for us. If it weren't for The Today Show, for example, I wouldn't know that on every bedspread in every hotel, from Motel 6 to expensive hotels, you can find traces of semen, because they don't change them very often. Ewww. Who wants to sit on a bed in a hotel?

I also wouldn't know about the "splash back" effect in bathrooms which pretty much ensures that every toothbrush in the house has some bit of excrement imbedded in it from toilet spray while flushing. I don't know about you, but I've been brushing my teeth for about 65 years now so I have probably injested a lot of excrement and I'd just as soon not think about that, thankyouverymuch. I seem to have survived, so why do I need to know about it?

I've also shopped in grocery stores on a regular basis since I moved out of the family home in 1961. I have moved thousands of grocery carts through hundreds of grocery stores without ever thinking about who touched the handle before me. Now I can't go shopping without imagining some kid slobbering on the handle or somebody coughing into her hands and then putting it on the handle. Did I really need to know this after all these years?

Ironically, I'm so cavalier about toothbrushes and grocery carts, but my grandmother taught me from an early age that public bathrooms were filthy places and I should never ever touch the handle on a public toilet. I had it so firmly imbedded in my brain for so long that I automatically flush a toilet in a public restroom with my foot instead of my hands and have done so since I was a small child. When Jeri heard that she said "Swell, now when I go to flush, I have to think about the fact that maybe somebody's shoe was on the handle."

I always came home from from running errands and put my purse on the kitchen counter, until I heard on TV someone who pointed out that your purse is filthy, that it may have been on the ground where dogs peed, or where people who stepped in places where dogs peed walked. Heck, in this house I might actually put it in dog pee from time to time. So where does one now put a purse safely?

We've all heard the "5 second rule" about food that is dropped on the floor. Seemed to make sense to me. If you pick it up within 5 seconds, it doesn't have time to collect all those horrible things that might be on the floor. Not so, says The Today Show (I've gotta stop watching TheToday Show) in a laboratory test that showed exactly how much bad stuff a bit of food can pick up in the 5 seconds it takes you to bend over to retrieve it.

Now I find out that toilet paper can actually leave bits behind on your behind after you wipe.

Who knew? I mean you go to the bathroom, you do your business, you wipe carefully in front-to-back motion, you flush the toilet with your foot and you remember to wash your hands before you leave and who knew that you might be suffering the embarrassment of toilet-paper butt?

I'll tell ya, folks, there are just too many things to worry about these days. It's enough to make you hide--but where is a safe place, free from excrement splash or dog pee or bath tissue residue?

(Do you suppose the people under fire in Afghanistan worry about running out of Purell hand sanitzer?)