Do the Yak

What in the world am I going to write about after the election is over? I don't care -- it's so fascinating and maddening that I can't help myself. On Saturday we had Maureen Dowd 's observation about the financial bailout mess: It was quite a memorable moment in history for the M.B.A. president and the nominee of the party of business. Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers? The first debate held no surprises; the real action is in the careening McCain campaign and its redoubtable VP, whose paltry intellectual pantry was stripped bare by the two-fisted Katie Couric last week. This was part 2 of the interview in which Palin claimed foreign-policy know-how because Russia is sorta next to Alaska and you can practically see it 'n' stuff. Yeah, and I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me a fucking astrophysicist. My Go

What with the financial meltdown and an increasingly obvious airhead as his VP (read this absolutely hilarious piece in the New Yorker), it's starting to look -- God, I hope -- that McCain is going down. Here's a Globe op-ed making the case. More interesting is the writer's suggestion that we Google "Top 10 McCain meltdowns." Now, I don't mind so much that the guy has a temper -- it's a common problem among power-hungry political/military types and not his biggest fault by any means -- but the list I found is pretty entertaining, especially Meltdown #1 against his own wife in 2000. I just have to quote it in case the link breaks: Cindy McCain playfully ran her fingers through the Senator's hair and teased, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain reddened and fired back, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Well. I can't wait until Kim Jong Il pisses off President McCain and he s

It's fall again and we're off to the races... new schedules, a new job for me, logistics of Thursday afternoon Hebrew School transportation to consider... but also a new era without Ben's aunt Priscilla, who died Sept. 12. I've been a tad busy since then at the funeral and getting back on track here, hence the silence. We left that afternoon with a rented minivan after I couldn't rustle up one to borrow from family or friends (everyone was away). In true Murphy's Law fashion, I had to get Ben to come to the rental place in Harvard Square because it turned out my driver's license had expired. Which I knew about months ago and sent in for a renewal to the DMV , which fucked up and sent me a duplicate instead with an expiration date about a week after it arrived in the mail of course . Stupid fuckwits . So we left late and hit traffic. We picked up G. and handled her repeated questions about where we were going, where the funeral would be, etc. It started t

Ben returned about 10:30 last night from a very difficult weekend in Delaware visiting his dying aunt and extended family (see last post). For Ben, the secondary drama was dealing with his mother G., whose Alzheimer's disease and being away from her familiar surroundings under such circumstances made her understandably confused and upset. This was just as hard to take in some ways as his aunt's illness. An example: G. asked Priscilla's nephew, who is a doctor, whether there was any chance Priscilla could recover. When he gently told her no, G. burst into tears and wept for a few minutes before calming down. And then asking the same question again. And getting the same answer, and experiencing the shock and pain of that information for the first time -- again. Ben did a wise thing, which was to have G. write down what she wanted to say in the way of a good-bye to her sister. Ben also made a short video using his cellphone of the two of them in the hospital room. It was shock

Here I am at home on a Saturday morning with the girls... but no Ben. This is because he took a train with his mother yesterday afternoon to Delaware, where G's sister Priscilla is dying of cancer. A couple of weeks ago, Priscilla was feeling tired and vaguely ill, so she went to the doctor, who did some routine blood work and found that something was wrong with her liver, so he sent her to the hospital for more tests... which revealed cancer throughout her liver. The doctors suspected that it has spread from another site in her abdomen, so they did an endoscopy and found a large mass in her stomach. The cancer was deemed inoperable, and she was also too weak or too far along to benefit from chemotherapy. Now we're up to Tuesday (four days ago). The prognosis was three to four weeks and hospice was called in. So now Ben had to decide what to tell his mother (who's close to her sister) and when. The staff at her Alzherimer's place were in two camps. One guy thought G. sh

Great piece by Judith Warner on Sarah Palin, putting my impressions of her nomination into words better than I could. I love her point about how the public feels that they need to be able to "relate" to a rpesidential candidate -- so he or she can't be too educated or "elitist," since the majority of Americans don't see themselves this way. As Warner says... In the past, it was possible to fill that need through empathetic connection. Few Depression-era voters could “relate” to Franklin Roosevelt’s patrician background, notes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “It was his ability to connect to them that made them feel they could connect to him,” she told me in a phone interview. I mean, wouldn't you WANT the president obe a little smarter and more worldly than you are? Since when do you have to be a voter's BFF material to qualify for his or her vote? My minimum qualification for president even before political stance is basic intelligence and a reaso

Welcome back to reality... it's the first day of school for Sarah and Becky, I'm back at work after a week's vacation at home, Hurricane Gustav just finished with Louisiana and there are three more storms lined up in the Atlantic, McCain named Sarah Palin as his VP and now we learn that her 17-year-old daughter is preggers... The week at home was nice, though of course I had a long list of Things to Get Done and only a few of them actually reached fruition. Also, for two of the days, Ben's car was gettingfixed and he had to use mine to get to work (he took off only Thursday and Friday), so we didn't have a lot of outing options except walking to Valley Pond, but that was pretty much OK because the weather was good and we enjoyed swimming and learning to operate a canoe. However, the girls got major thrills from two of our trips, one to the Children's Museum -- where the most excitement came from riding the Red Line and squishing pennies in an inconspicuous hand-