"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." So said Irina Dunn back in 1970. And there are plenty of gals out there who, at one time or another in their life and with great conviction, know just what she meant. One of them must surely be the writer Kaye Gibbons, whose Diving Women I have just this morning finished reading; my cup runneth over. I believe Kaye is the only writer I can recall whose penetrating eloquence will evoke such irrepressible, spontaneous, grateful yawps of "yes!" from my mouth every few pages. Lewis Lapham's essays have been known to affect me the same way. It's the same reaction women the world over have when they find themselves reading the words of some courageous soul who dared to speak the truth: Thank you! we breathe. Thank you for telling the truth.

This has been something of a five day reading jag. A reread Middlesex by Eugenides, and Amsterdam by McEwan. Excellent, fine reads, so very different in style but both read so long ago they seemed fresh and new, inspiring as I get ready to do more editing on my story, anxious to be finished with that so I can start the next one. Reading jags replaced Scarlett variety crying jags decades ago and are my way of gearing up for a writing jag. (I recall one woman saying, "I write in order to talk without being interrupted".) It's a kind of conversation I have with other writers since they're somewhat thin on the ground in my neck of the woods at the moment. But Kaye... I swoon when I read her. Just swoon. A fan letter may be necessary to clear my mind.

So, after yesterday's litany of complaint, let's carry on to more entertaining news. I understand the phone companies will no longer be printing phone books. No doubt they will try to pass this off as "going green", their contribution to saving trees, but it's a foil for penny pinching. We will need to pay now one way or another to get someone's number. I recall in high school being told that if one visited France the tissue offered in public rest rooms was simply the pages of old phone books. Way to recycle is what I say. Leave it to the French to be that ahead of the curve.

I also hear tell that Bert and Ernie are no longer roommates on Sesame Street; the gay thing. As though proximity (two twin beds within a few feet of each other) bred wanton sex. Anyone who watched fifties TV can tell you that simply isn't so. And Cookie Monster is now Mr. Health Food. Um... isn't the name, the fact that his appetite for cookies is monstrous, enough to imply a negative side to eating too many cookies? Not to mention his loopy disposition. No, I guess not. This new breed of witless children need a road map for everything, every relationship. The Dos and Don'ts of subtleties. And Irony? Well you can forget that..

Need a laugh? Here's a marvelous video my son showed me the other day. Absolutely hilarious. Again, something that moves me to whisper thank you! to whatever clever congregation of folks put these kinds of things together for our not so guilty pleasure.

Facebook fans! Check this out. You think these are the good guys cause they're young? And here's my question. For a company with NO income stream, what on earth could possibly make it worth billions to these folks so eager to get their hands on a piece of it? What kinds of information are on Facebook that would make it such a valuable commodity? Who might be desirous of availing themselves of such information as Facebook can provide, to which tens of thousands of people a day contribute information? The NSA? nah. Why would they do that?

Why would all these companies try so hard to get a piece of this action?

Incredible to think anyone who uses Facebook for personal rather than business reasons might expect privacy of any kind. That's, as my kids used to say, just plain dumb.

Finally, sisters are doin it for themselves, right there under the Vatican's nose. And I say yeah, sistahs. My favorite bit in this one?

Mrs Longhitano, who says she has always wanted to be a priest and played with communion wafers as a child, has accused the Vatican of preventing women from fulfilling their vocation.

She liked it better than dolls. I bet her makeshift vestments were snappy. Very Italian, of course.

As always, your comments are welcome below.

Ciao.

That there is the Atlantic City skyline on a cloudy day. A cloud that, despite the clear blue out my window, hangs over the nation with seemingly no intention of blowing out to sea any time soon. So on this day there is good news and bad news. Let's get the bad over with, shall we? And a cautionary note: If you're one of the people on the verge of despair wonderin if the answer to the dismal economy and appalling, endless search for a job might be retraining at one of those dubious bastions of post secondary education bleating at you through the telly screen to "gain new skills for today's rapidly changing job market", think again. Read this woman's story in today's Times. Makes me so mad I could spit!

The paternalistic (when has it not been so? and when does paternalism not smack of condescension?) and willfully chipper White House seems determined to keep its 'children' (we citizens) from seeing the truth: that the US economy has been permanently and irretrievably hollowed out like an October pumpkin to the sole benefit of an upper class (and their minions) of corporate/financial fat cats enjoying ever greater profits and productivity, despite permanent layoffs, as they hail each other, speeding away to offshore banks, unable to mask their disdain for the weak, lazy ex-workers with their slow American waddle who trusted the system and are now left cryin in their beer, mopping the bar with worthless Enron stock options.

Obama appears irrepressibly upbeat (and often seems exhausted by his efforts in that area) about jobs growth. The Times article implies it's a lack of certain skill sets (or automation) as well as (maybe just a little) the continued offshoring of jobs that is killing US workers. The proportionality of these "causes" isn't clarified, but if it's really skillset shortage, how is it that productivity is up to record levels? Yet Obama is determined to finance retraining opportunities despite knowing full well that in this lean and meaner "economy" (as in 'stingy'), the demand for new skills moves ever faster than the workers are able to retrain. Perhaps designedly so. And even after you, in good faith as you sip the KoolAid passed out at job centers, borrow money to retrain yourself from the same, ruthless banks still refusing to lend to smaller companies so they can hire, it's such a buyer's market for employers, that they want a year's experience in your new field before they'll hire you-- your new costly training be damned! As if the recent graduates of DeVries Institute and the like were in teh same boat as the lucky children of well connected upper middle class parents, the ones who comfortably and with ease finance summer internships on the Hill, on the job training for the privileged. Every deck you can imagine is stacked against wage workers now. And they are 4/5 of the American workforce.

It's enough to send you tearing out to the garage for a pitchfork. This baloney about retraining is a lie. We heard the same crap in the seventies and the eighties while the corporations and manufacturers were exporting jobs faster than you could say " service economy". Retraining so the corporations wouldn't go offshore for better trained workers? Fiddlesticks. They're just buyin time til the next generation comes up to the plate, with no knowledge of the hoaxes Corporate America (we capitalize them now, are they not men? sayeth the Court) laid on their forebears, and absolutely no sense of history or their place in it. But they can work a remote. They can sit at a screen for hours without becoming bored. Never aspiring to something better, more meaningful. It's Henry Ford's dream redux, but on a national scale.

The country is hollowing out as the cancer of over consumption, greed and wasteful living eats it alive, its citizens quickly divided into the haves and the have nots of excellent credit, those who will suffer permanently and those who, because of the savings that very suffering affords them, will come out smelling like a rose.

And was it not ever thus? "A Republic, if you can keep it." Franklin knew people were lazy, greedy. But we were supposed to be the hope of the world. The Great Experiment which, through trial and error, brought fair government policies to bear in order to ensure its citizens equal opportunity, meritocratic pay; work hard, learn much, find reward in a just society. This was the aspiration, at least of those who bought the idea and strove to see it materialize.

Poor President Obama. I 'd like to like the guy, he seems affable enough. Affable? Is that the best we can do? Where'd all that fire go? Where's the leadership he pretended to? There's something there I don't trust. Never have. Agree with Ken Silverstein or whoever it was in Harper's (post note: sorry, it was John MacArthur) who said ages ago the guy was Clinton/DLC all over again, or some such. Changed his tune too often during the campaign, along the margins, then entire paragraphs, until he stuck that flag pin in his lapel and it was all over. Me, I voted for the one man who never, ever lied to me. Who for years honored me as a citizen by never assuming I'd prefer a fairy tale to the truth. Yes, I'll admit it was tempting to vote for the first - half - black president, but I realized that was a kind of hubris in itself, wasn't it? Thinking we could put the past behind us with one lousy vote after so much damage had been done, the ghettos worse than ever. And choosing Rahm.. well that's just too big a disappointment to believe. Rahm and half of Wall Street running the show? The foxes aren't just guarding the henhouse now. Like Hutus, they've hacked the hens to pieces and are feasting on barbeque of the remains.

For pity's sake, the Dems have enough votes to nominate another genuine liberal light to replace Stevens. The ONLY justice who saw clearly in 2000 and was brave enough to cry foul with a loud voice. I wanna know what Kagan's view of Bush v Gore was. You think anyone will ask her that? Doubt it. Whether she has the legal mettle to impress progressives really hinges on her view of that one decision. Can she see the forest for the trees? THAT is the question. Bush v. Gore is NOT settled law, so it's fair game for the Judiciary committee. The majority opinion themselves said that decision was NOT to be understood as setting any precedent. ('Scuse me, folks, but isn't that your JOB? Your stated Constitutional function?)

I don't care if Kagan's fun to play poker with. People voted for Bush cause they thought he'd be fun to drink with. Well, in a nation of people addicted to one thing or another, it's a no brainer that half of them will vote for a fellow addict. And what will we get? A consensus builder? Please. This is a sellout; The Bland leading The Bland. Obama's forte.

I feel today as a woman scorned, and you know what they say about us.

A rapper whose name i've forgotten said: Wars are won by those who endure.

Who here will endure? What will be the quality of what remains?

I believe I've worn you out today. The good news I mentioned upstairs will just have to wait.

Requiescat in pace, David

We extend our deepest sympathies to the friends and family of David McLaughlin who died on Friday, May 7. Will remembers him as a friendly, patient teacher and carpenter whom he liked a great deal, and I will remember him as a creative spirit, curious and intensely interested in everything, and a delight to talk with. He will most definitely be missed, and that in itself is a tribute to his spirit.

So just because I am such a child and can't keep a thang to myself...

I am going here to do this for a week, just 25 minutes from Laramie, Wyoming on May 28 and I may bust a gut from sheer wantonness and excitement before then.

And huge thanks to cousin Lynn (who I am soooo glad to have connected with, a wonderful writer, who gave me the link to the WWGI that gave me the link to Page Lambert's writing, riding – uh.. what shall I call it? – camp for grownups?

I used to ride when I was young and wild, just galloping away, no style, pretty crazy, and am now older and wiser, i.e., terrified of horses, but Ms. Carlotta, my heroine, will need to be embarking on a long ride through the desert southwest on a horse in the sequel to my as yet unpublished novel, so I figured I best get on a horse and get over myself.

The week is devoted to tuning into the intuitive way horses communicate with us and maybe writing about it. I hope to slide right into that trust and communication as I let go of my fears, kind of an equine bungie jumping for me, and learn to trust the horse and hold the reins more loosely, as it were. Maybe even write something worthwhile about it. Meet some good people. Stare out at... well.. anywhere that's near a place called Medicine Bow, you figure it's gonna be pretty worth staring at. I have always wanted to go to Wyoming!! This is a dream come true.

DID I MENTION I AM TOTALLY PSYCHED FOR THIS??

I'll never be able to contain myself til then. I even get to fly on a prop plane. BTW, anyone considering flying out west anywhere, don't even bother with any airlines but Southwest. Man, those people know how to take care of you. I saved a lot of money (compared to so- called travel sites) by booking directly on the airlines' (Southwest and Great Lakes Air) websites AND had loads more flight options that worked much better for me. I called both airlines' Customer Services and they were amazingly helpful. I mean the kind of service you used to get most places, but no more. (T says Southwest is the T-Mobile of airlines.)

Italy and all those Botticelli's will just have to wait. I'm goin ridin'.

Is this the face of evil or what? Anybody know who this guy is? It's former ousted congressman and wingnut radio talk show host J. D. Hayworth. and if you want to see a picture of what has often been called The Ugly American, just study this sucker's face and look carefully into his blackened soul. Hate oozes from every superenlarged, evidence-of-a- bad-diet (as if his girth weren't a dead giveaway) pore. What was that character's name in Animal Farm? The head honcho piggie? Just springs to mind without effort , doesn't it?

And here's why we care : he is John McCain's opponent in the Arizona Senate race and may well win on a platform of stinginess, hate, and bigotry. As if McCain weren't scary enough with his flip flopping George III variety madness and bloodless mutant wife, now we have a whole new variety of wannabe politicians comin at us screamin Who's your daddy?

Shades of Gleichschaltung and the declining Weimar, people. Like my Nanny used to say: Dontchoo fool yo'self!

Be afraid, be very afraid. Any minute they may decide they don't like the color of your eyes either.

ON a lighter note...

You know I have a thing for old motels... as you may have noticed from the last several months of blogging here. The one above left (just west of Atlantic City on route 30) is only one of the many I've seen all over the country over the last several months. Their intense poetry to me just demands a photoessay book: Abandoned America. Such despair on their faces. Like forlorn children, something betrayed. You just sense (and do NOT slam me for a moment of sentimentality here please) that someone, whoever actually built the place, had an enormous urge to hospitality. An impulse to offer friendly respite to travelers, and maybe to find a smidgen of comradery thereby, contact with the world beyond the motel, stories from afar, the human mystery of wanderlust. They were looking for friends, and were of a kindly nature these motel owners. For how could you be a success in that business if you weren't built that way?

When I left Maine my principle complaint, aside from lack of cultural stimulation in the area I inhabited (good for writing, bad for stimulation) was that in the over 15 years I'd lived there I hadn't made any real friends. I once talked to a shrink in Camden town and she said all her patients complained about that too. In fact, it was their most common complaint about living in midcoast Maine. It's pretty suburban really, and once I moved off the island to the mainland, it felt not unlike the Philly suburb I left in order to move north, only the scenery was whoa better. Still a small town was a good thing in some ways for kids and pets. And I accomplished a lot there, but still, when I left I felt that given the years there, true friendships, the kind of folks who always get what you mean, especially your jokes, accept you unconditionally, and are loyal to a fault, were thin on the ground.

And now I"m homeless, more or less. And I have so many friends, people I feel really "get" me, I can't keep up with the emails! Go figure.

Whatever it is, I love it. And thanks for everyone who emails me with encouragement and rah rahs and love.

So I am working on a couple things:

My mind, I've come to recognize, is like some cable telly spin doctor, constantly interpreting my thoughts and experiences to myself. I'd like to stop spinning my own life to suit my preconceptions and just live it. Stop feeling the need to interpret everything, and just be. This is hard to do, simple, but hard.

For only that day dawns to which we are awake, said Mr. Thoreau.

And I'd like to unlock whatever part of my heart decided many, many years ago, to keep that little wall of fear around it full enough to function as a moat.

My new mantra, and it's an imperative sentence, is this:

Unlock, my Heart.

Unlock, my Heart.

Open wide

and let life in.

Breathe deep.

Now deeper.

And breathe again...

Do forgive me, everyone. Busy, busy day today. Shall post first thing tomorrow after walkies in morning. kiss kiss

ps... guess what this is? Are the girls to become cosmopolitanites?

(is that a word?)

Me and all my wonderful cousins on the course at Essex Fells after lunch following my Uncle Bill's funeral yesterday, complete with military honors and taps. He was 95 when he died on Wednesday and had lived a good long life, primarily, I'm told, on a diet of ice cream, sweets and laughter. We all loved him and will miss him. My mother worshipped the ground he walked on, her big brother. He's walkin those endless green golf links in the sky now with his wife, Doris, and most likely his brother Doug and my mom as well. God love em all. (As I recall, that was Aunt Doris' favorite expression, God love em. She was a happy woman.) The thing I will remember most about my aunt and uncle was how often they smiled at one another. They were a genuinely happy, truly loving couple. Love and laughter in their eyes every time I saw them. Bordered on a mischievous twinkle, as though they were co-conspirators in some great secret. To love like that is a great gift. A perpetual act of mutual faith that for some reason strikes us today as larger than life.

I once knew a nun, Sister Mary, the principal of Villa Victoria Academy where I taught French, who was perhaps the most optimistic person I'd ever met at that point in my life. No matter what you said to her, her response was always "God Love ya". It took some getting used to, someone, an advocate with amazing constancy, insisting to God that he/she love me no matter what came out of my mouth or what I was thinking every second of the day. Eventually she said it to me enough times that I came to expect it and to believe that God did indeed love me and that Sister Mary was the instant messenger bringing me that happy news, news I sorely needed at the time. Now that I think of it, when do we not need that message, that the Universe, God, the Mind that runs the show, loves us, and that, like the Beatles tried to tell us, Love is all you need?

I'm still workin on swallowing that idea whole the minute I get up in the morning and letting it work in and sustain me all day. And daily I fall seriously short. You know, I can't imagine why it's such a hard one for us to live all the time. But it really is, isn't it?

As always, we can turn to wise Yoda for the answer: (Revenge of the Sith was on TV today)

The fear of loss is a path to the dark side. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Riiiiight. No so easy.

One trick to doing that may be to ask, what do I have left if what I fear to lose is lost to me? If you can live with that, you're good. But even that doesn't get to the root of the problem. It all comes down to faith, that the Universe is Love, at the very least a mathematical perfection, and that we are part of that. It's a kind of faith and acceptance of what is. The Be Here Now school of philosophy. Hard to do when everything around you demands an answer to "Well, what then?"

Let it be?

more later....