Episode 45: Goin' To The Chapel...

...Gonna Get Married

Jo and I took our daughter Leslie with us to a remote Spanish village about fifteen years ago. Fearless as ever about plunging into any language in any country in which she finds herself, Jo introduced Leslie as "mi higo", not "mi hija".

Thus was Leslie bestowed with my nickname for her: Fig.

Now, for the first time, Fig is getting hitched. Her tootsie is Matt - bright, good-looking, gainfully employed, and a man who insists on doing the cooking.

He is also fifteen years younger than Fig. (I will pause here for female readers to exclaim, "Way to go! Atta girl!" and "Right on!") Matt designed the engagement ring (pictured) with stones he purchased in India. ("You go, girl")

Geezer has always admired versatility. Fig has been a writer and anchor for Public Radio stations in the Northeast, an editor/writer for INC. magazine, an instructor of graduate students at Emerson College in Boston, and a columnist on film for the Boston Globe, to mention a few highlights. She makes friends easily, in all of the countries to which she has traveled - the reason she finds the need to find hotel lodging a rare experience. Those she counts among her ever-widening circle can expect to receive from her photos, clippings, birthday cards, and notes about items of possible interest. She cultivates relationships as she would a garden.

Together, she and I have created a website for a hotel marketing firm and collaborated on three travel guidebooks. In that work, I have seen that Fig pushes back at current media expectations to just "get it done." She is more concerned with getting it right.

It's been a hoot watching Fig transform herself from diligent professional to girlie-diva-bride.

I couldn't be happier for her.

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That Was Then
In 1860, a rangy one-term congressman from Illinois who had opposed the Mexican-American War ran for president. In 2008, a tall, first-term senator from Illinois who opposed the Iraq War is following the same path.

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Let's Par-TAY!
There was a Halloween celebration at an office of the Department of Homeland Security last fall.
Costumes were encouraged. One intellectually-challenged white employee came dressed as a prisoner at a detention center, complete with a prison jumpsuit, a dreadlocks wig, and his face painted black.
He won a prize for "most original costume."
The judge was Julie Myers.
She presides over the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, which has 16,000 employees.
It took her two days to realize that "a few of the costumes were inappropriate."
We can all go to bed every night knowing that our government is eternally vigilant.
And sensitive.

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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Gun Control
Not with humanitarian hunters like these stalking the woods.

It reminds Geezer of some of Hillary's recent ploys to position herself as just another good ol' country gal. She waxed fondly about her daddy (or was it her uncle?) teaching her how to shoot when she was just a li'l tyke back when in Scranton. (Strange nobody mentioned her past record urging stricter gun control laws.)
Then she gathered up a camera crew and went to a tavern where she could be filmed knocking back a beer and a shot.

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YouTube Alert
You have to check out www.babiesforobama.com.
Lookit there! I finally figured out how to hypertext!

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Health Watch
*Twelve years ago, Sonny Graham received a heart transplant from Terry Cottle, who had shot himself. Sonny married Terry's widow. In time, Sonny Graham came to think that Terry had a good idea there. Last week, he, too, shot himself to death.

*The article was illustrated by a black-and-white photograph of a room that looked like a sub-basement of Torquemada's dungeon. It was deeply shadowed, paint scaling off the walls, and at the center was a Chinese woman working at a crude table. She had laid out pig intestines, cut them open lengthwise, and was scrapping out the mucus membrane.
The membrane is a key ingredient of the blood-thinning drug heparin. It was administered to me during an operation on my carotid artery last summer.
I didn't die, but over sixty other people have.

************************************************************************************* Grilled Tuna with Fruited Rice
Serves 2
This has been a staple in my recipe file for at least a decade. I think I clipped it from the Times and that it was created by Marion Burros. It's a tasty light meal, and only about 550 calories total.

4 ounces yellow onion, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
Three-quarters cup long-grain rice
One-and-half cup chicken stock
One-half teaspoon tumeric or, preferably, saffron
2 4-ounce tuna steaks
1 tablespoon lime juice
One-quarter cup dried cherries
2 scallions (green onions), trimmed and sliced
1 ripe banana, peeled and diced
Salt
Pinch of nutmeg

Preheat the broiler.
Heat the oil in a nonstick pan. Saute the onion until it starts to soften. Stir in the rice, stock, and tumeric or saffron. Bring to a boil, then lower to a bare simmer. Cover and cook until the liquid has been absorbed; about 17-20 minutes.
After the rice has cooked about five minutes, wash and dry the tuna steaks, place them on a double thickness of aluminum foil, and carefully put them under the broiler. Turn them over after 4 or 5 minutes and broil for 4 minutes more.
Pour the lime juice over the cherries and set aside.
When the rice is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cherries (with the lime juice), as well as the scallions, banana, salt to taste, and nutmeg. Serve with the tuna.

Episode 44: On The Trail

Dear Congressperson:
Can you say (or even think), "Windfall Profits Tax"? Or can you possibly, maybe, conceivably, however improbably, decide that the Big Five didn't really need that $18 billion tax break to underwrite domestic oil exploration?

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Whatta Guy
Looking, as ever, like the guy in a 1930s Arrow Shirt ad, Mitt Romney has generously - and humbly - made himself available to be John McCain's running mate.

That would inevitably bring up the issue of Mitt's Mormon religion yet again. Assuming he isn't one of those religionists who cherry-picks the least inconvenient dicta of his faith to observe, here are some of the founding convictions of his church:

In 1827, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited by an angel. This was in the vicinity of Elmira, in upstate New York. The heavenly visitor identified himself as Moroni and revealed to Smith the existence of gold plates upon which were written the tales of ancient prophets who left Jerusalem in 600 BC and migrated to America. Two magic stones were also to be discovered that would allow the discoverer to translate the symbols on the plates.

Smith said he found and dug up the plates and the stones out back of his farmhouse. That presented a problem: He couldn't show the plates to anyone because they would be struck dead, or so he said he was told. On the other hand, he couldn't write, so he needed to translate the plates to a scribe. The solution was to hang a blanket across a room, Smith dictating on one side, a literate neighbor on the other. Over many weeks, a detailed transcription was thus produced. Upon completion, the gold plates, unseen by anyone but Smith, returned to heaven.

I might mention here that Smith had been convicted of fraud less than two years before his self-investiture as a new prophet. But if you, like Mitt, swallow any of this, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a Book of Mormon for you.

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Jay Leno displayed a picture of McCain and Romney on the Tonight Show the other night and said, "Doesn't it look like the head of Leisure World explaining the benefits of assisted living to the newest resident?"

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That's not the only photo of McCain with a former opponent - see right.

These days, John is on what is being labeled his "biography tour", meant to "re-introduce" himself to the voters. One wonders whether he will remind the electorate that he graduated from the Naval Academy fifth from the bottom of his class.

Or whether he will repeat his admission that he doesn't know much about economics - that is, about the subject that is currently the number one issue of concern to Americans.

Or that "It's not social issues I care about". Or that he "would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected." Or that "The nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs."

Or that he has made a habit of firing obscenities at Senate colleagues with whom he disagreed. Or that he once joked that the reason "Chelsea Clinton is so ugly" is "because Janet Reno is her father."

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusions that he is (1) not bright enough to be president, (2) ignorant of key issues, (3) hot-tempered, (4) mean-spirited, and, at 71, (5) far too old.

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I'll Get It!
In Hillary's "red phone" commercial we see parents looking in on their sleeping children late at night, the mood peaceful but ominous. Then the images fade from black and white to full color. An announcer intones "Who do you want answering the phone at the White House at 3am?" and we see Hill reading. In a pantsuit. With jewelry. In full makeup. At 3am.
The woman is a powerhouse.

(Asides: The footage of the sleeping children was originally shot for a railroad company advertisement and one of the children, now a young adult, has declared herself an Obama supporter.)

That's not all. Hillary is courageous under fire. According to her oft-repeated tale of derring-do, she landed at an airport in Bosnia with sniper fire all around. According to her story, delivered with the devil-way-care smile of a grizzled war correspondent, her party had to run bent over to a waiting vehicle, bullets whizzing overhead. Chelsea was with her. And Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.

We now know, of course, that this was a fable. She says she "misspoke". She was too kind in that characterization. What she did was lie! Made it up! The war was over! (She took her daughter with her into a war zone?) And she thought what Clintons and far too many other politicians think - that she wouldn't get caught.

Even if it had happened, being shot at in Bosnia doesn't buttress Clinton's claims of foreign policy expertise. It doesn't even give her street cred. People get fired upon in Tuzla, Beirut, and Detroit. It only makes them victims, not experts in diplomacy or warfare.

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