I looked out the door this morning to see my car totally covered in ice and surrounded by driveway as slick as a skating rink.
I was in Albany, having stayed overnight with one of my women friends. My five long-time friends and I had gotten together on Saturday and expected to head out for brunch today. Uh. Uh.
Years ago, I broke my ankle badly slipping on a patch of black ice. Needless to say, we missed brunch.
Instead, after I eventually and carefully slid out and started the car while my hostess chipped away the layer on my windows, I hit the yarn sales. I’d been thinking that I’d better start using a lighter weight yarn for my projects, since we don’t seem to be needing heavy sweaters much around here these days. (Knitting is the one thing I can easily do while sitting for hours in front of the television with my mother. She is scared to be alone.)
I listened to NPR on the foggy, rainy drive back down the Thruway. (Driving outside the interference of the mountains is the only time I can get NPR on the radio.)
Garrison Keillor and his Prairie Home Companion were on, and he did a great bit about Nancy Pelosi bringing a blindfolded Dumbya to a defunct but well-equipped “men’s club” In San Francisco, where he was told he was being kept safe in a bunker, and from where he could continue to plan out his Iraq strategy. He minions were also brought there, all being wined and dined and treated royally while they were kept out of Pelosi’s way. Of course, Keillor and company delivered it all brilliantly, cleverly, and irreverently.
Keillor also published a wonderfully irreverent article in the Baltimore Sun entitled “Time for the Father to Chat With the Son, “ which includes the following:

Meanwhile, in Washington, memoranda are set out on long, polished tables, men in crisp white shirts sit at meetings and discuss how to rationalize a war that was conceived by a handful of men in arrogant ignorance and that has descended over the past four years into sheer madness.

Military men know there is no military solution here, and the State Department knows that the policy was driven by domestic politics, but who is going to tell the Current Occupant? He is still talking about victory, or undefeat. The word “surge” keeps cropping up, as if we were fighting the war with electricity and not human beings.

Rational analysis is not the way to approach this administration. Bob Woodward found that out. The President Bush who burst into sobs after winning re-election when his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., said, “You’ve given your dad a great gift,” is so far from the President Bush of the photo-ops as to invite closer inspection, and for that you don’t want David Broder, you need a good novelist.

Here we have a slacker son of a powerful patrician father who resolves unconscious Oedipal issues through inappropriate acting-out in foreign countries. Hello? All the king’s task forces can gather together the shards of the policy, number them, arrange them, but it never made sense when it was whole and so it makes even less sense now.

American boys in armored jackets and night scopes patrolling the streets of Baghdad are not going to pacify this country, any more than they will convert it to Methodism. They are there to die so that a man in the White House doesn’t have to admit that he, George W. Bush, the decider, the one in the cowboy boots, made grievous mistakes. He approved a series of steps that he himself had not the experience or acumen or simple curiosity to question and that had been dumbed down for his benefit, and then he doggedly stuck by them until his approval ratings sank into the swamp.

He was the Great Denier of 2006, waving the flag, questioning the patriotism of anyone who dared oppose him, until he took a thumpin’ and now, we are told, he is re-examining the whole matter. Except he’s not. To admit that he did wrong is to admit that he is not the man his daddy is, the one who fought in a war.

Hey, we’ve all had issues with our dads. But do we need this many people to die so that one dude can look like a leader?

Keillor also wrote a letter to the Editor of the Sun last week about banning smoking in Baltimore. He cited the following stats, which only go to support what I was ranting about here. He said:

One wonders if our legislators are aware that secondhand smoke is the third-leading cause of preventable deaths in Maryland, claiming the lives of 1,000 people every year.

Or that the economic costs of exposure to secondhand smoke in Maryland are nearly $600 million per year.

If leaders are serious about improving health and saving lives in Maryland, they will make limiting exposure to secondhand smoke a priority.

Moreover, while statewide legislation is the goal, smoke-free initiatives present a great opportunity for local officials to show leadership even if state officials will not.

Baltimore loses more than 150 people to secondhand smoke every year.

Well, my car defrosted rather nicely on the not-so-nice drive home through the rain as the sheets of ice flew off its top and sides. Ooops.

I confess that I didn’t listen to Dumbya speech yesterday. It’s always so very hard to find those few fragments of wheat among all that chaff. It’s so much less aggravating to wait until FactCheck comes out with its assessment. Which they just did.
This is their summary, but you should hop over and read the whole thing:

President Bush’s sobering address to the nation laid out his plan to rescue Iraq by sending in more troops at a time when polls show the American people want just the opposite. Is his approach a significant change of course? Will it work? We leave that to others to chew over. What we can say is that he was right on the facts he cited, although there were some notable omissions. While he highlighted the planned distribution of oil revenues to the Iraqi people and a new commitment of reconstruction funds by the Iraqi government, he didn’t say a word about how the U.S. or Iraq would deal with rampant corruption that threatens to undermine both.

I think it’s worth repeating here FactCheck’s take on the “corruption” angle:

After you live in a place for while, you wind up driving around the territory by rote. Your subconscious remembers certain place markers so that otherwise generic stretches of country road remain familiar. You know that you are on the road home because you have passed a certain stand of birch or split rail farm fence or huge ancient maple tree centered in an acre of weeds.
There is a downhill stretch of country road I drive on the way back from town. I know where I am because the high craggy side of the mountain rises suddenly in my vision. It marks my place on the road home.
Several days ago, as I started down that hill, I suddenly felt lost. The road seemed unfamiliar. It took me a few seconds to realize that the mountain was not there. Instead, the gray sky edged my view from horizon to horizon.
I was aware of parts of my brain darting about trying to decide if this were some other downhill stretch and I had lost track of where I was driving.
No mountain. No crags. Not even hint of evergreen or speck of granite. Just miles of gray sky. The thought came to me that, in another time, I might think that dark forces had magically removed the mountain; that I would need to do some sort of ritual to bring it back.
As I drove closer to where the mountain should be and made the turn into the road that follows the mountain’s base, I still couldn’t see it. It was gone from sight. Like magic.
As I drove up the driveway, I turned to look again from another perspective. Nope. Nothing. Just impenetrable gray sky.
The next day the sun came out and the mountain was back.
See, my ritual worked.

I’m one of those people who never smoked. Oh, I tried it in my teens, my cousin and I swiping Parliaments out of the case in her father’s soda fountain where we both worked on weekends. We would lock ourselves in the bathroom and blow smoke out the high little window. In college, I tried again, since most of my sorority sisters smoked. But I still didn’t like it, and I’d rather spend my money on beer anyway. (Back then, a big glass of beer was 10 cents; of course, the beer company was owned by the city’s Democratic machine bosses and so every bar had to carry it. The beer did not exactly taste that great but it did the trick.)
Back to smoking. Maybe it’s that I hate being addicted to anything or anyone. Not even hanging on to things I own. Well, maybe my computer.
My son is a smoker. I hate that and he knows it. I hate it because of what it’s doing to his lungs, his brain. I hate it because his father used to smoke and he’s feeling the effects of it to this day. But my son is an adult with the right to do with his own life and his health as he chooses.
Over on my his weblog, he is assessing the appropriateness of efforts of a Commissioner of the city of Portland, Oregon to institute a public policy that bans public smoking, even on sidewalks.
I left the statement below as a comment on one of his posts.

It seems to me that the public policy debate is very much related to how that public policy affects the health of individuals of that public. Granted, gas fumes are also unhealthy. But that’s another public policy debate issue.


Cigarette smoke is both noxiously harmful and noxiously distasteful to smell. Smokers do get used it it. You can get used to living next to the smell of a garbage dump.


Many health establishments ban people from wearing strong perfumes. The sense of smell is very sensitive in most people, especially non-smokers. Personally, cigarette smoke makes me nauseous and makes my sinuses swell. So does strong perfume. But at least strong perfume is not toxic to lungs. And it doesn’t do damage to brain cells, as nicotine does. And it’s not addictive, either. And it’s easy to embarrass someone wearing such perfume by muttering something about it loud enough for them to hear. Not so, however, with smokers.

There is currently a public “cultural” outcry against smoking by non-smokers for good reasons. Not the least of which are health related. If it takes pushing the empathy button or striking fear into the hearts of those too stubborn and/or addicted to nicotine to break the habit, then I say go for it.

Yes, it should be that anyone who wants to damage themselves by smoking should do it in the privacy of their own homes. That way they don’t wind up being role models for kids and they don’t befoul my air space any more than I already have to deal with.

And if the public pressure gets so bad that they quit, all the better for them. And their families. And the public.

We ban spitting on the sidewalk. And littering. Why not ban public smoking.

It’s bad enough that we’re on opposite ends of the country from each other. Now we’re on opposite ends of a very personal issue.
Feh.

That’s sure what it feels like. It might well go up to 70 degrees here this weekend.
Maybe the folks who can actually do something about the ultimate problems will finally get the message.
Personally, I have this general feeling that the whole of existence is just out of sync, not just the weather. I can’t seem to get into a lot of the things that I’ve always enjoyed. Reading, for example.
I’ve always been a voracious reader. Fiction, mostly. Fiction with kick-ass female protagonists, mostly. These days, instead of actually reading, I take the lazy way out and download audio books from my public library and listen to them as I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. The problem is that the library’s selection leaves much to be desired.
I don’t like the kinds of romance novels that writers like Nora Roberts produce. The library has lots of them. However, Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb turns out a series of unqiue sci-fi/romance stories with a great female main character — Eve Dallas, a cop in the next century. The library has a few of those. They also have one of the novels by forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. Her series with Temperance Brennan as the main character is the basis for the current Fox television series, Bones. But I’ve already read that one in real book format.
So, the other day I downloaded a series of short stories by Elizabeth Berg. In my days of actual reading, I had consumed several of her novels, my favorites being The Art of Mending. and Talk Before Sleep.
All of Berg’s novels wrestle with the contradictions that suffuse the lives of “ordinary” women. Yet, her characters emerge as truly extraordinary in the management of the details of their lives and their relationships. The short stories to which I am listening these nights include a vignette about a woman whose mother is developing dementia and how the two of them deal with it. It’s told by the woman and shifts between her memories of mother of her childhood and the mother she now has. Obviously, it hit home.
The other stories are just as relevant. I like reading about women who muse, women who amuse, women who love and hate and wonder and know how to kick ass. Women whose living is infused with introspection and honesty.
Occasionally I can get into a male writer. I read all of Dan Brown’s novels — for their subject matter as well as for the roller-coaster writing. I have even enjoyed listening to a couple of Dean Koontz’s eerie tales.
But tonight it’s back to Berg.
I miss my women friends.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. The sky was rosy pink as I drove down the Thruway just after dusk. That should means that tomorrow will be a nice day.
A halo around a full moon, which there was tonight, is supposed to mean that bad weather will follow.
Just more conflicting premises in a world full of them these days. There’s proof that there’s global warming. There’s no proof that there’s global warming. We are in danger from terrorists. We are safe from terrorists.
What is there to do but take one day at a time, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
I had a lovely lunch today in Albany with a friend from college. He and I were not really friends back then, but we became such since. It was nice to get away for the day.
And the drive back, despite the conflicting sky, was not bad at all. New non-reflective eyeglass lenses do, indeed, help.

The above title headlined a piece in Albany’s Times Union newspaper yesterday, written by a male U.S. citizen, 61 years old, whose adulthood stands framed by two tragic wars carried out under the banner of stars and stripes unfurled. Thanks to non-blogger myrln for emailing me about it.
The author of the piece, Brian O’Shaughnessy of Troy New York, states:

As a person of faith, I have consistently applied the Just War Theory to our country’s war deliberations. Dating back to St. Augustine, this theory reflects the Gospel presumption against violence and establishes numerous conditions as a firewall to war. All of its conditions have to be met before the expected violence can be morally justified. They include using all nonviolent means to settle a conflict before resorting to violent ones. Also, the good to be achieved must outweigh the probable costs and damages.

While the entire piece is worth reading, at some point it will disappear from the paper’s internet archives, so I quote here (and urge all my readers to widely share) the author’s suggestions for conditions that should be met before we wage any more wars:

I’ve lived here for a year, but, until today, I only had met one neighbor — and the only reason I ever met her was because I would pass her taking her baby for a walk while I make my occasional effort to get some walking exercise myself.
So, when we found an invitation in our mailbox inviting us to a holiday gathering at a new neighbor’s just diagonally across the road, we accepted. We even took my mother along. (Actually, I wanted to go by myself for a while but I was outvoted.) The gathering was in a house that I pass each time I’m out walking. It rests at the base of the mountain, and it has a three-car garage. I’ve always wondered what it looks like inside.
Here’s where the envy comes in.
The living room, dining room, and kitchen are one big area, and the kitchen area is huge, the cabinetry distressed white. But, almost best of all, the living room is all glass-walled, open to a breathtaking view of the tree-lined mountainside. And, even better than that, the living room has cathedral skylights across which the top of the cliffs stretch in craggy granite splendor.
The young family who own it actually live in New York City and comes up here on weekends. They have fascinating jobs, a new baby, and an amazingly well-behaved toddler. Most of the people there were also weekenders. One of these weekend famiies owns a farm on the other side of the mountain, where they keep llamas and chickens and other assorted small animals. I couldn’t help feel a little envy for their lives, their casual wealth.
Oh, there were some of my year-round neighbors, too, and I made a point of going over and introducing myself. While it was a pleasant couple of hours, I resented a little that I had to spend more time “mommy-sitting” than I spent socializing.
But my satisfaction from meeting and getting to know my immediate neighbors overrides my envy. It’s going to feel good to wave to them as they drive by or if we happen to meet up on their occasional walks as well. And, who knows, maybe someday I’ll be invited to another party. If that happens, I’m going to insist on going alone.

The delicious Jeremy Outerbridge has tagged me in the current blogtag game of “Tell five things about you that no one knows.”
It just doesn’t seem fair that Jeneane opted out of her tag. I know that her blog is one of the most truthful out there, but, c’mon Jeneane. There must be something you’re still hiding.
In the spirit of RageBoy’s and Kat Herding’s lists, here are mine. Are they all true? Heh. What do you think?
1. For several years while in grade school, I was the young virgin who led the procession and who carried the crown that went on the Virgin Mary’s head each month of May.
2. I was a virgin until I was twenty years old.
3. I have a passion for RageBoy.
4. I used to play the guitar and my favorite song was “Oh Lonesome Me.”
5. I have never indulged in any illegal substance.
All right.
Now I tag these good bloggers:
1. Roxanne
2. Betsy Devine
3. Doug Alder
4. Elayne Riggs
5. Stu Savory