“What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep!” ~ current Supreme Court nominee

 

As I lounged sleepily on a lawn chair three summer seasons past, I devoured a ROLLING STONE article about this blondish fellow named Donald Trump, a guy presently stacked in my musty basement, he being featured on umpteen PEOPLE Magazine covers highlighting zippy, scandal-hinting essays behind their splashy covers.  Some accounts date back to the 70s as I, the pack rat, seldom throw anything away, even trash.  I liked the biographical sketch, and I almost understood The Donald who would soon be running for president.  He reminded me of oodles of males I grew up with and attended college with and know even unto this very day.  I married one of them.  His name is Donald, too.  And the three of us boomers…THE Donald, Donald, and Susie are all the same age.  God help us!  Alarm bells!

 

I am thinking of tossing the ancient unread magazines and simultaneously avoiding the entire body of current information altogether, regarding tweet-obsessed Trump.  I know this person far too well already.  His misguided, manufactured, chaotic mess I fear impacts the entire universe as we know it, from environmental concerns on this our perilously poised planet up to and including His giddy proposals to involve and pollute outer space itself (dubbed “Space Force“?)–and everything in between heaven, earth and the deep blue sea.  Who and what might be in harm’s way? Nearly every human ethnicity, safari animals, farm animals, homeless Homo sapiensand domesticated animals, sundry forms of wildlife, immigrants from absolutely anywhere, border toddlers turned into orphans, feminists and all women and girls generally speaking, the reputations (by  mere association with role-model POTUS) of masses of other swaggering entitled white males who have at this stage gotten away with centuries of often murderous or near murderous misbehavior and rather suddenly cannot (Thank you, Ronan Farrow!), pure clean waterways, air quality, soil, weather patterns, “sh*t-hole countries”, reputable countries once our allies, crazy power-hungry sinister autarchic countries clandestinely computer-hacking to assure an absolutely certain digital World War IIII, noble principles and hard-won values, monarch butterflies, and…bumble bees!  Whew!

 

Three summers back, I once enjoyed our now overgrown poison ivy festooned backyard and the sporadic appearances of frisky friendly bustling frolicking squirrels, the buzzing drone of hornets and sweat bees, the rustling leaves on huge trees with eerily frightening creaking trunks, the forlorn rusty birdbaths hosting splashing robins and wrens, the fading of my winter-time accumulation of psoriasis bumps which otherwise can be cured via pricey pharmaceuticals bearing side effects ranging from baldness through gastrointestinal distresses and concluding with  terminal lymphoma (the Jackie Kennedy cancer) if one day I should opt to turn myself over to the drug-selling whims and talents of docs thriving upon kickbacks. (Oh, and the bonus being constant return trips to be checked for tuberculosis, reminiscent of the 50s patch-test days when TB was of epidemic proportions and will be yet again!)  

 

This “Florence the Hurricane” (Our FEMA director continually referred to Florence as Floyd which is a bit disconcerting?) summer of 2018 filled with call-girl/porn star/ former apprentice tell-all autobiographies, Bob Woodward’s investigatory journalistic efforts (aptly entitled FEAR), cable TV pundits who presently seem like old and dear friends orcharacters in an overwrought millionth round of CLUE — THE BOARDGAME, and high school drinking binges and inventive dating practices of grown-up wholesome Supreme Court nominees provided a potpourri of boob tube viewing like none other.  The plethora of indictments, manacles, and mug shots filled our screens like never before except maybe when we once watched Robert Stack/Eliot Ness hunt Al Capone down courtesy of Desilu Studios offering up THE UNTOUCHABLES — as well as annual repeats of each of THE GODFATHERfilms!  (Not to mention, reporters struggling with pronunciations of an unfathomable number of Russian names of oligarchs.  I’ve never had this much questionable fun since the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov became required reading  at Ball State University during the Communist-detesting 1960s.  Ah, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and  BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and WAR AND PEACE…where are you now?  (Maybe in the basement with TRUMP?)

 

A VERY BRIEF EXPOSE’ follows   (subtitled — Implausibilities of Speaking Truth to Power?):

 

After living well into a seventh decade, if one is prohibited from telling it like it is or was, what then might be the point of ever having lived at all?  Not to be prim or prissy, I confess with some pride that I was not in the family way prior to any nuptials of which there has only been one as divorce is generally verboten on my side of the family.  Approaching a half century “anniversary” of standing atop a tall cake while wearing a plastic virginal white gown and veil, one can truly eschew celebratory open houses, corsages, balloons, confetti, or cruises spent cavorting on walkers.  How embarrassing to pretend otherwise.  I need not stop to create a false illusion of wonderfulness and gaiety…rather, condescension and misunderstanding peppered so profusely through those years that personally I have forgotten whom I may have developed into if not stumbling and misstepping down the traditional Biblically ordained path toward what some call bliss and others more accurately label slavish obedience.  I played with many sets of wedding paper dolls, brides and bridesmaids and flower girls in petticoats until the frilly gowns were tabbed onto their cardboard frames.  Thus, I engaged in the allowed and encouraged bouts of romantic fantasizing, but not a Hell of a lot?

 

This past year, I rediscovered who more realistically lurks deep inside my heart and brain…totally certain that if I could start all over again, I might have given Jane Goodall a run for her money.  When I found myself fiercely threatened with strait-jacketed commitment(seriously?) due to prolonged grieving directed toward an aborted attempt to save a tiny runt-of-the-litter kitten’s life (I have saved nearly-gee-I-dunno possibly hundreds of animals’ lives during my own lifetime?), I became feministically livid!  Could it possibly be that some frigid chauvinistic judge (similar to a GOP Senator) at the Salem witch trials might be categorizing me as “mixed up” or diminishing me to poised, lady-like Anita Hill’s suspect status at the hands of a politically aligned publicist named David Brock advertising her as “a little bit nutty and a whole lot of slutty” (resulting in Clarence Thomas becoming a Supreme Court Justice, no further questions asked?  Dejavu?)  The foolish, unnecessary demise of the precious feline I still cannot reckon with and am full of remorse and cannot figure out how to blame my typically nurturing self when so many other assorted nincompoops added elements of confusion to the toxic mix.  At any rate, said kitty and his evidently virulent affinity toward ringworm are now off the face of the earth, and cross-contamination has possibly come to a close I guess, Mr. Fung! (References abound in that previous sentence…do some research by googling away to your heart’s content.)  

 

One might find as old age gallops up and grabs one by the brittle hip-bones or twisted kneesand shoves the heart into irregular fluttering palpitations and pushes the brain into occasional spooky dizziness and the eyeballs into partial “comes and goes” blindness, that any sane person might need conversion therapy after all (whatever that is?) to rethink exactly why very dumb but expected socially mandated choices may have been selected and to satisfy exactly whom?  Misguided dork Hugh Hefnerbegan to publish ridiculously grievously irresponsibly salacious fictional picture magazines in his mommy’s basement, and insecure males bought them only for the “articles”, and “dating” became a quaint verb, and some of us who still wore training brassieres in high school or even college became terribly self-conscious and hard-pressed (to say the very least) not to make up for flat chests with creative petting (or else!) or enhanced bustline implants whenever marriages got boring or to withstand rude remarks, from pillars of the community attending social functions, when bosoms naturally sag due to such scientific (naughty word these days?) events called gravity. ( No fooling…ask any dame who has encountered wandering eyeballs at some local dinner banquet, wherever and whenever Friday night FEESHFRIES occur! With side orders of coleslaw and baked beans finished off with Texas sheet cake squares!)

 

Listen up! Be your own person…be yourself…practice compassion…never be cautious about demonstrating sincere kindness.  None of us are earth-bound for very long…and for that we can be oddly grateful and cheer on folks such as, need I reiterate, Hillary  C., Nancy P., Courtney T.,  Dianne F., Debbie S., Maizie H., Amy K., Claire M., Elizabeth W.,  Maxine W., and Kamala H.  and Anita H. and a dear soul named Meghan McCain who delivered an explosively no-holds barred, chastising eulogy proclaiming her love and admiration for her late war hero daddy whose very recent  bravery on the Senate floor, killing an ill-conceived half-assed bill denying far too many citizens sufficient health care, impressed anybody with a heart.  Like father like daughter!  I can  identify with that!  Anybody wanna stop by my curb on the day I plan to place old, outdated, moldy PEOPLE Magazines, and probably high school yearbooks and brassieres, out for the trash man?   

 

Feel free to check out or visit or nosily drop by my bloggity-blog where I engage in one-sided conversational monologues filled with gaiety, bragging, advice, alarmism, activism, dire warnings, perkiness, rhymes, sentence fragments and run-ons, too, opinions set in concrete, allusions, rebellion, cute photos, animal talk, ME TOO claims, VERSE IN FREE FORM, and a smattering of self-preservational condescension which I have learned from the person I married one fine day when verbal sparring became totally necessary to avoid being chopped up and deposited within various disposable suitcases like Raymond Burr’s unfortunate wife in REAR WINDOW.  Yes, the old allowable but pathetically fragile male ego created a monster!  Long may she wave!  Patriarchy is HIStory; evolution is HERstory!   About time!

 

Look for my next investigatory installment dealing with the death of a 24 year old Magnavox television, the panicky emergency purchase of a flat screen 21st century Wal-Mart blue-light special “smart TV”, learning to live with the disembodied commanding yet informative voice-overs of a high-pitched Asian lady BOT akin to Tokyo Rose during World War II, the puzzling need for four remote controls each of which performs only a single much needed function such as ON, OFF, channel change, and volume control as well as On-Demand capability, Pay Per View availability, etc., etc. and so forth to be dealt with at the proper time as in NEVER!  We are learning the tricky yet fine art of juggling which is great exercise for couch potatoes.  Divorce is imminent once again.  Also featured will be an analysis of why we must update computer passwords on a daily basis and a shout-out for suggestions seeking creative magic “Open Sesame” phrases.  Special thanks to the farm family of a young comedian named Tim Conway whose temperamental, perhaps slightly faulty, doorbell constantly hummed and buzzed day and night.  No problem for positive thinkers who believe in half-FULL glasses!  Visitors waiting on the porch would be welcomed whenever the doorbell STOPPED ringing.  When Life hands us lemons, we must concoct …daiquiris!  And to any physician I may have offended with my old lady candor I offer the following: Have you heard about the squirrel entering a tavern requesting from the bartender a Hickory Daiquiri, DOC?  Time’s up!

 

INSTRUCTIONS MANUAL INFORMATION:  

Am I listening to the doorbell as it does not ring?

Garbage truck whirring  through winter, summer, autumn and spring?

Tim Conway and I shuffle to answer the door.

Whisked into memories today, forevermore.

Gather Trump and Dostoyevsky down basement stairs.

William Faulkner, love you best–ever in my prayers!