Eating out? Eating in?

My ex-husband hated eating out. We may have done it five times in the seven years we were married (doesn't include work related meals in restaurants). I am not accusing him, but all five restaurants burned down within a year. When I suggested eating out, he would say it wouldn't be fair to the restaurant.

Eating out after the divorce was more lunches at work when I didn't take sandwiches. I was watching pennies.

 

As a single mom I shared an apartment with a friend. She watched pennies too. Once, we really, really, really wanted a pizza from a certain restaurant. We really didn't have the money. We went on a search of pockets and couch cushions and found enough for a pizza, but not enough for a bottle of Coke. 

We put my daughter in her car seat (nothing like those of today) and off we went. We ordered the pizza to go and put the box in the back seat. When we went to retrieve my daughter and the pizza, her foot was in the pizza. 

I looked at my roommate. She looked at me. Half of me wanted to cry, the other half laugh.

Back inside we cut around the footprint and ate the pizza anyway.

For decades since, eating out is a common occurrence. Restaurants can be anything from a hole-in-the-wall to a five-star extravaganza. I still find all a treat. If I know in advance, I will look forward to it all day.

Rick and I alternate lunch making. Often my husband will say, "I'm going to cook at Flowers" or Gambetta or or or any of the many other village restaurants . Sometimes I do the same, but he does it so often, waiters will ask "So Rick, it's your day to cook?" Truth alert: When he does cook, it's good very good.

Today, Rick decided to "cook" at the beach. There's a long row of restaurants facing the sea and other rows.

The couple of open restaurants we did pass had typical beach food. We wanted a real meal. 

Things were looking grim.

We did know of a restaurant that was open at the port, but on the way we passed an open brasserie. From those eating on the terrace and the slate menu outside, we were saved.

It was great. I had gambas, Rick had boulet picolet (a local meatball). For dessert I had my favorite Ile Flottante. 

What fun. I love that eating out can happen any day. Or we can eat in. I no longer look for change in pockets and under cushions for a small pizza, the first in and for months.  

The memories are good. Each represents a stage of my life...a life filled with good food from pizza to gambas. And days like today are just fun.

Murder in Edinburgh

Part of a chapter from the Third Culture Kid Mystery series. Available at https://encirclepub.com/ in paperback or as an e-book. There's a serial killer who goes from city to city, country to country, making it almost impossible to catch. Chantal, the wife of one of her victims calls in her friend from school days. Annie has stumbled across other mysteries in the past and Chantal is hoping she'll find out what the police can't about her husband's hit and run.

"He was murdered. It wasn't an accident." Chantal Bosset MacAndrew poured a cup of coffee for Annie Young-Perret, her former Swiss neighbor and then gave herself a second cup. Chantal had never developed the tea-for-every-important discussion typical of Edinburgh dwellers, although she'd lived in Scotland for 15 years. Her French accent had melted into an almost Scottish brogue making both English and French hard for Annie to understand.

Annie's slowness in responding wasn't in understanding the words but following the story behind the words. Her phone call two days ago from Chantal asking her to please, please, please come to Edinburgh to help combined with the "I will explain everything when you get here," made Annie fly out the next day.

The women had been neighbors in Corsier Port, a Geneva, Switzerland suburb, throughout their years at the lycee, but they were never close friends. They had some overlapping courses and they had crammed for exams together. Chantal has a more business, practical bent, where Annie could never take enough history courses to satisfy her curiosity about the past.

Now Chantal was the curator of a still-to-be opened, small Edinburgh museum by the Early Scottish Poets Memorial Foundation dedicated to the preservation of national poetry before the 1600s. She was also a new widow.

One of the reasons they hadn't been better friends in Switzerland was that Annie considered Chantal too predicable. Later she had discovered how wrong she was when Chantal had gone camping and had what the French call a coupe de foudre, love at first sight when she met Duncan MacAndrew. She'd finished her studies at Edinburgh University. Duncan was at nearby Napier University where he studied human resource administration.

...

"A hit and run is murder," Annie tried to concentrate on what her friend was saying.

"The car that hit him was stolen from a car rental agency."

"Kids joy riding? Drunk? Drugged?"

Chantal put down her cup and stared into Annie's eyes. "The car was wiped clean. Spotless. Nothing."

"Smart kids joy riding?" Annie didn't want to appear glib. She was aware that Chantal had lost her ame soeur, her soul mate. Despite the disparities between Roger's world view and her own, she couldn't imagine life without him. She'd gotten a taste of what that might be when he had his almost fatal heart attack that forced his early retirement.

"And he'd nearly been hit before."

Annie looked confused.

"Three times before he was killed, a car tried to run him over. I was with him once about a month ago. We were on a sidewalk and if there hadn't been a driveway that we ducked into, I wouldn't be here talking to you now."

 

 

Scars, Codes, Vaccines

 

It was August. I was six and so excited. We were in Dr. Halligan's office. He was a leprechaun of a man and he was about to give me my small pox vaccine so I could start first grade.

It was the last step to my becoming a big school girl. I already had five new outfits, one for each day of the week. I would learn to read. I'd heard that they would have new crayons for me, one for every color of the rainbow and a brown, a black. A friend, who'd started first grade the year before told me that mid morning we would have a bottle of milk and two cookies. I wasn't as thrilled about the milk as I was about the cookies.

To celebrate that night, my mother drove me and my grandmother to Lawrence to look at the damn. I have no idea why, but the water rushing thrilled me and I used to love watching it. The damn was a sometimes goal of a Sunday drive and if I were lucky, it would include an ice cream. This would be a special trip.

I didn't know what small pox was except if I got it, I would have terrible scars instead of the just one I would wear on my arm the rest of my life, a badge of safety. Without it, I couldn't go to school.

I feel the same happiness over my QR code to show I've had my two Moderna shots against Covid. The Swiss government had sent it to my phone automatically. It was my pass to liberty.

For over a year life had been marked by attestations to be filled out each time I left the house, two quarantine bouts, no movies, restaurants, limited shop access. I missed the two-cheek, three-cheek kisses of friends, and even more I missed the hugs, the coffees in cafés, the restaurant meals, the get togethers. There were so many summer friends from England, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland that had not been seen for over a year because of travel bans. They have begun reappearing thanks to the codes.

Pre-code a few local friends and I had worked out buying take away coffee and going to the next to the church to sit far apart on one of the benches near the fountain for our allotted half hour of freedom.

It had been harder hearing of friends who died and others who were fighting to live.

Now I had a code that showed when I entered a store, a restaurant, a theater everyone else in there was not a danger to my health. It showed, too, I wasn't endangering anyone. We shared a responsibility to one another. Do whatever possible to end the pandemic.

The shops and restaurants that had been shut, could now resume business. The French and Swiss governments may have given them money to sustain their basic needs, but it was a year out of their financial lives. I care about Elisabeth, Arnaud, Stephanie, Philippe, Natalie, Joseph, Rosella and all the other merchants I see regularly.

Those who earned their living by marchés could once again set up their stalls on Saturdays and Wednesdays. We didn't need to flash our codes at them but I would have had they asked. How wonderful to chat with the people selling the sausages, the olives, the fresh veggies.

The movie theater is 76 steps from our front door. What a treat to watch Nomadland in VO (version original) and a second film in French. I see the Cannes winners being shown and I can pick and choose what I want to see all thanks to the code. I know the other people sitting in the red fake-velvet seats are no danger to me or me to them. 

This is truly freedom.

 

Celebration

 

We were sitting on our patio. The champagne had been poured. The fire took off the early autumn chill.

As a couple, we find a lot of things to celebrate. What would it be? Then we realized it was Mabon, the autumn equinox. That would be the day's celebration.

For me, the equinoxes are a marker. Mabon marks the end of summer, the time when the day and night are the same length. 

It is harvest time. Already men and women have baskets on their backs that will be filled with grapes that will go to the local wine co-op. And orange nets are under the olive trees ready to catch the fruit when the tree is shaken. 

Snow is on Canigou.

If we were in Geneva, the leaves would be turning mostly yellow, with a free red ones. More wine harvesting. The sunflowers would have disappeared. Corn and hay are stored in barns for the winter. A little into the countryside, train cars would be filled with sugar beets.

Cows would be brought down from passage. Flowers would be woven in their horns.

The fire crackled. At times the wood looked like a gray mountain side. At other times the coals glowed red. One moment, it reminded me of looking down on Chicago on a red eye flight from San Francisco to Boston. There were the same tiny lights in the night as were on the log. The embers changed into red outlined squares.

We have weeks of days growing shorter ahead of us. It means getting into PJs earlier, curling up with a book, drinking hot chocolate and eating fondues and raclettes. It is the wind kissing my cheeks, of greater energy. At the beach is means bigger waves and walking in the sand without wall to wall towels and tourists. Instead there might be a single person strolling with his dog that will greet our dog.

We raised our glasses. "To Mabon."

 

Capitalism Consumerism Circles

 After 9/11 George Bush told people to go shopping.

America's economy depends on constant consumerism.

 

 The planet's survival can be destroyed by constant consumerism.

These two statements can both be true and a total dichotomy.

A high school friend gave me a book about our home town of Reading, MA in the early 1920s. The town was full of small businesses including some factories. A large percentage of the population was self employed or worked in town.

It was not a poor town. Folks had what they needed and probably a few extra things. Some people had more than others.

Today, the picture is different. Jobs come from corporations. Local business may be a few shops, chains, funeral homes, insurance reps, that sort of thing. People leave town to go to work.

The industrialized world over-shops. Duplicates, triplicates of things abound. Garages, attics, basements are stuffed with things bought and cast aside as in the picture above.

Most of those things provided jobs for people to also overstuff their homes feeding the economy.

Meanwhile those things also used up planetary resources. Although we don't have an aluminum crisis yet, there is still a limited amount on the planet. Everything has a limit.

I'm not an economist. But it doesn't make sense.

A love story

 43 years ago today I stood at a snack bar at Tan Tara Resort in Missouri. It was the start of a love story that would make a great Hallmark movie.

Opening Scenes 

A woman in her early 30s stands at a snack bar during a break of a CUES Marketing Conference for credit union managers. She is from Boston. A young man approaches. The coup de foudre shocks her. He orders a chocolate milk shake and looking at her healthy drink, adds an apple. It is apparent that his reaction is the same as hers.

They spend the rest of the conference together, sometimes with other attendees, sometimes going off on after session activities like horse back riding. At the swimming pool the CEO of a service credit union is in the pool with them. He will later offer the woman a job in Germany which she will turn down. The man and woman go off to a local restaurant and he is horrified when the woman orders catfish. 

His upstate New York life is very different from hers in Boston.

During the time together they talk about everything from privacy for credit union members' monthly statement to a story about the little boy, happy to be in a barn because with all that horse shit, he thinks there has to be a pony.

As they talk about their lives, it is obvious that nothing can happen. They each have family responsibilities, a daughter each. The idea that they are a conference cliché runs through the young woman's mind and she accepts it.

Airplane scene

The conference ends, but a storm has blocked the roads back to St. Louis airport. They hire a tiny airplane. The pilot has to arrange them and their luggage carefully to make sure there is balance. They fly low over the trees which are changing from green to fall colors.

Many short scenes

They stay in touch. The young man's new job takes him to Boston every so often. They go to dinner, walk the Freedom Trail, go to a show staring Lauren Bacall. 

The phone call

The young woman calls the young man, now both are a little less young, to say she's moving to Europe.

Many short scenes

We see the man with his family, building his career, moving to Texas. She is adapting to living in Switzerland. It is like the other one never existed. They think of each other from time to time but pre-internet there's no way to contact each other. 24 years go by.

The discovery

He sees her byline on a story in Credit Union News. She is their international correspondent. She's on LinkedIn. He is no longer involved in credit unions. She has her own financial news service. 

Another conference

He knows she lives in Geneva from information gleaned from the internet. He has to attend a conference there. He takes a chance and asks via LinkedIn if she would like to have a coffee with him.

She is shocked to see his name pop up. Originally she had been planning to be in the South of France where she spends most of the time. She calls him. He takes her call on the conference room floor.

Starbucks/Café du Soleil

When she enters Starbucks, where they agreed to meet, she recognizes him from the back. She invites him to the Café du Soleil for a very Swiss fondue. They share as much as they can before like Cinderella she has to leave. She isn't worried about losing her glass slipper, but the bus, not a pumpkin, that she needs to catch to get home, will stop running.

The next few weeks

Show different phone conversations, e-mails. Little by little they reveal the feelings they had hidden long ago. 

South of France

She invited him to her Nest, a studio along the Med. "How will your friends know we're together?" he asked. "When I hold you hand," she tells him. The vacation ends too quickly. He heads back to the States, she heads back to Geneva.

He decides he has to move to France to be with her. She finds it a great idea.

They hold a commitment ceremony a year later with 40 friends from 7 countries witnessing. Two years they will have a civil ceremony to make the marriage legal.

The closing credits of the movie followed by the words:

THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Aging Sucks

 

Aging sucks!

But, as a friend said, it beats the alternative.

On the other hand, it is an alternative that many have been denied.

As I push into my 80th year, I wonder how I got here, other than day be day.

The things that annoy me are the aches and pains, the physical limits. It is hearing about something that seemed like yesterday, and it turns out to be 50 or more years ago. It's taking multiple pills for blood pressure, to convince cancer not to come back, calcium to keep my back straight, and to convince my esophagus it doesn't want to spasm. I call it breakfast and make a joke out of it. It still sucks.

I don't mind being one breasted. That could have been done at an earlier age than it happened. I only wish I'd loped off the other one so I could go braless and look even in my clothes that are form-fitting.

I realize over all, my life has been good to wonderful. There were the painful three years after my divorce before I discovered how much better my life was single and how many more choices I had. There were some painful betrayals by people I thought were friends. It taught me to look for signs to avoid more disappointments. Overall, my life has been more interesting, freer and happier. I once thanked my ex for the divorce.

Somethings turned out differently than I wanted or maybe partially would be a better word. I'm not a best selling writer, but people read the 16 books I've published. Again so many writers never see their work published. Writing is as much a part of me as the blood running through my veins.

My dream of living in Europe has turned out better than all my dreams. Two days ago I was watching gentle waves lap onto the shore of Lake Leman. The water was so clear, I could see every crevice of the rocks underneath. On my walk home with the dog, the Alps were out in all their glory. This morning walking through my French village, seeing several friends and buying bread still warm from the oven is something I hope I'll never take for granted.

Career wise, I could have made different choices, but the ones that worked left me modestly financially secure with some interesting work. If I were to be reincarnated, I would still want to be a writer, work harder to be a journalist, or maybe an anthropologist.

My daughter was one of the lights of my life. I say she wasn't the thing I did best, but she was the best thing I did.

So I don't like the wrinkles that seem to pop up regularly. I don't understand why there's more on my left than my right cheek. I'm delighted with my white hair, something I wanted since my 20s. Okay it was chemo baldness that got rid of my red hair. As a vain woman, who hated roots, it is a relief not to hide in the bathroom while I dye my hair in secret. Yet I'm alive.

The older I get, the more friends I lose. Each one leaves a hole that is somewhat filled with all the memories of things we shared over the decades.

I have managed not to get fat, but since I was so skinny up until my 40s, it was easier than it was for some others. I wear fun clothes, not the house dresses and aprons with sensible shoes of my grandmother and her friends. Their clothes screamed aged. However, I don't want to be a piece of mutton dressed up like lamb as the saying goes.

After I "retired" at 63, I've had some wonderful, wonderful years. I ran a news service for seven years, wrote and had published several novels. 

I remet my soul mate (first time was 43 years ago this Thursday) after we'd lost contact for 24 years, and we have had eight fantastic years...including dealing with the ordinary and a couple of extraordinarily scary things as a team. Not a day goes by that I don't feel gratitude for this twist in my life, one I was neither expecting or wanting. Surprises are good.

I've been able to refine my appreciation for the little things: a bowl of tea in the morning, not just flowers but a bouquet of thistles and cotton balls, the lap of waves at Lake Leman and the Med, a piece of chocolate. The list could take up several blogs.

If our planned trip to Scotland gets cancelled as it looks it will at this time, I have to remember how many times I've been there. There will be other times to see friends, see Beatrix Potter's home, the Edinburgh story festival, a trip north while my beloved plays golf, have mac and cheese at my favorite pub, etc. Even if we don't go, I have memories of other times. Again I feel lucky that so many of these experiences were not one offs.

I am greedy. I don't know how many years (days, weeks, months) I have left. I want to make sure that no matter what the time frame, they are lived to the fullest. 

My pup Sherlock has just come in to the room. He wants a pat on his soft fur before settling down on the bed behind me. There is joy in touching his soft fur and looking into his eyes as he sends me messages of what he wants.

Life is a gift. It's many gifts.

Tradition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDtabTufxao&t=1s

                                                                    

Fiddler on the Roof has a great song, "Tradition." 

Like most families, we have traditions that are important to us. One that has been special to my daughter and me is the Cafe du Soleil calendar.

The Café is the oldest brasserie in Geneva. Each year they put out a calendar with a different theme.

The café itself, was a favorite place when we lived nearby. When my daughter visited me, she would say she wasn't really in Switzerland until we had a fondue there, usually the first night. 

After she moved back to the States, I made sure I sent her a calendar each year. However, 2021, the café was closed by Covid. I told her that it would be the first time in a couple of decades, the tradition would not be continued.

Slowly restaurants reopened. Rick and I went to the café. Hanging up on the back wall was the 2021 calendar. There were two left. I grabbed one.

Themes over the years have been varied.. For example a recent one was cartoon heroes eating fondue in the restaurant. Another was fondue through the ages starting with cave men melting cheese over a fire and ending with a fondue at the café.

This year's showed the café from the outside and inside. As I looked at the drawings, I realized I had sat at every table shown. The table along the wall was where the Geneva Writers Group had lunch between our morning and afternoon workshops.

 This tradition is memory laden on many levels.

Peace and Simplicity

Today I am voting for personal peace and simplicity. So much is going on outside my world: Afghanistan, Covid, anti-abortion laws, voter restriction. Idiots who do not know the background of many of these issues that they mouth off about often endangering others with their ignorance. Anti-this, anti-that without offering solutions, without trying to find a compromise.

For years I've wanted simplicity in my lifestyle, owning as little as possible and still have what I need and things that warm my heart and soul. Example? A prism that my grandmother used to put in the window of the dining room so a rainbow would fall on my food.

It doesn't help me that I'm a news junkie. What does Fox vs. CNN say? What are the Brits and French reporting? the Germans? Al Jazeera? RT?

Today, I did a quick review and then vowed to not look at the news. Not look at FB. E-mails can wait till tomorrow.

I made spaghetti sauce, admiring the translucent of the onions. The strawberries are a beautiful red. I need to walk through the garden that feels both like late summer and early autumn to drop the garbage in the can. The air is gentle on my cheek.

I feel my body relaxing. 

I'll do more edits on my novel Lexington after we eat. 

When I feel myself tense, I will breath deeply.

At some point after editing, I'll go back to the novel I'm reading. Maybe take Sherlock for a walk by the lake. He usually decides where he wants to go and he's already been to the farm today so the lake or the tennis club would be his other choices.

I can't control the world. Maybe I can control my little, tiny corner of it.

Every time I pass this farm, my heart and soul soar with happiness at the beauty.

I will seek more of this.

9/11

9/11 was horrendous.

3000 Americans did not die that day .

3000 people died from 44 countries.

Of the countries that lost citizens in 9/11. None attacked Afghanistan, Iraq except the US. The attackers came from Egypt, UAE and Lebanon and Saudi. So why attack two different countries? These wars never made sense.

United States 2,605

United Kingdom 67

Dominican Republic 47

India 41

South Korea 28

Canada 24

Japan 24

Colombia 18

Jamaica 16

Philippines 16

Mexico 15

Trinidad and Tobago 14

Ecuador 13

Australia 11

Germany 11

Italy 10

Bangladesh 6

Ireland 6

Pakistan 6

Poland 6

Israel 5

Peru 5

Portugal 5

Argentina 4

France 4

Lebanon 4

Romania 4

Brazil 3

Ethiopia 3

Guyana 3

Malaysia 3

Bermuda 2

China 2

D.R. Congo 2

El Salvador 2

FR Yugoslavia 2

Ghana 2

Haiti 2

Hong Kong 2

Jordan 2

New Zealand 2

Paraguay 2

South Africa 2

Sweden 2

Switzerland 2

Belarus 1

Belgium 1

Chile 1

Honduras 1

Indonesia 1

Ivory Coast 1

Kenya 1

Lithuania 1

Moldova 1

Netherlands 1

Nigeria 1

Russia 1

Spain 1

Taiwan 1

Ukraine 1

Uzbekistan 1

Venezuela 1

Of the 19 terrorists, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the UAE and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. Note none came from either Iraq or Afghanistan.

 

Overall the war has killed 171,000 to 174,000 people in Afghanistan.  

Population-based studies produce estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties ranging from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 1,033,000 excess deaths (per the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey). 

 

That's a lot of dead to avenge the 2,605 US deaths. 

The winners?

• The terrorists.
• The companies that manufacture war equipment.

 

 

RIP dumb phone

I am about to replace my Swiss dumb phone bought before there were smart phones. 

I do have a smart phone for my French life. I detest it.

I am not a Luddite. I'm on my third website. I use my laptop at a minimum six hours a day on most day. 

It's the telephone part I hate.  I consider the phone number a secret equivalent of the CIA, released only to those that I most love.

Whenever the phone rings when I'm out I have an urge to stamp on it until only slivers remain. Normally, I'm not a violent person. I try and save the lives of mice trapped by the cat, for example. I will even carry a spider outdoors to give him another chance. 

This would annoy my husband who considered it too expensive to be submitted to violence.

Why?

When I am out I don't want to be bothered with phone calls. I want to be disconnected to the world, including e-mails, social media and news. Dealing with the phone stops me from observing the leaf falling from the tree, the little boy riding a bike, a beautiful dog all the things that if find interesting and beautiful and exist only for the moment. I can deal with what messages the phone contain when I am home. 

On the positive side, if I think of the phone as a camera, my murderous desire toward it subside.

I do see some advantages such as the GPS AP or when I need information about something that cannot wait until I get home.

More and more I need it for things like my QR code to show I'm safe to go into restaurants, etc. 

Equally annoying now is the verification codes needed for some purchases and banking. These often seem to get lost until all the information goes away. I haven't tested if the paper version works when I enter a restaurant.

If I hate smart phones why am I buying one? My dumb phone has decided not to let me text. I need a Swiss number for certain banking transactions. My French number won't do.

More and more I'm looking for peace in my life. The smart phone is a barrier to that. Bring on the smithereens.

 

Billing supermarkets

More and more grocery stores have introduced customer scanners. I would happily use one, if they paid me to do their job. I thought of how to send them a bill.

Figuring my time as 100 CHF an hour, if I spend 30 minutes a month scanning my grocery purchases, then the bill would be 50 CHF.

People who earn less would be paid less. Housewives, who do not work, might be paid at their husband's hourly rate. 

In Switzerland there are some extremely high salaries, some going into seven figures. Naturally they would earn the most for the time they were working for the supermarket. 

For people with lower salaries, they could add to their income perhaps without having to get a second job to make ends meet.

Just an idea.

Hugs

The pandemic put an end to hugs. Social distancing does not allow for hugs.

I did not discover the pleasure of hugging until my later twenties. Neither my family or my first husband were huggers.

It was only when I lived with a family of huggers that I discovered the warmth and comfort of sinking into someone's arms. Since then I've had many friends, male and female, who give good hug.

Articles have been written about how hugging is healthy, reducing things like blood pressure.

The pandemic did not stop my husband and me from hugging. After all we did not social distance in bed, nor when we were moving around the kitchen. 

Two kinds of hugs are possible.

• Frontal tummy to tummy, arms gathering the other in.
• Rear where one is sitting and the other goes behind and wraps their arms around the hugee, often resting one's head on the hugee and even dropping a kiss or two on the head.

This past week I resumed hugging with some trepidation. All the adult hugees were vaccinated, although I did not ask to see their QR codes proving it.

Two hugs were given because the friends needed comfort.

The others were the family of my French "daughter." As we were leaving I felt arms around my waist as her precocious frighteningly intelligent eight and a half year old proved his future as a great hugger. 

There are a few friends who I used to hug, I won't because of they aren't vaccinated. I miss that. With most friends, vaccinated or not we used fist bumps or a hugging motion, a kinda virtual hug. 

Some day hugging will no longer carry a moment of trepidation and will just represent warmth, caring, sharing.

Talking about pregnancy

When my daughter began menstruation we talked about sex. She already knew the basics, but the discussion was about the social/psychological aspect.

We talked about what would happen if she became pregnant now or even when she was in high school and what were the alternatives: adoption, abortion, raising the child.

We knew of adoptions gone wrong there were cons as well as pros to this often quoted solution. Raising a child while still a child seemed to have only cons. Abortion solved a set of problems but was a horrible solution.

The upshot and solution was safe sex. 

However, once into adulthood, an unwanted pregnancy, which can happen, leads to the same three bad alternatives. It is a lifetime decision, one that the woman lives with the rest of her life. No one, no government has the right to make that decision for a woman.

 

 

Day Care Moms free chapter

 

Brenda Ainsworth

“Didn’t I tell you I need a break?”

 

“You did, but this assignment is too well paying, never mind that it will be fun. And never mind my commission will pay my mortgage this month and part of next,” my agent, Barbara Milton says.

 

I laugh. We’ve worked together for decades. I know how she tries to sell me on assignments for different writing projects, especially those that don’t excite me.

 

Some have driven me half-crazy where if I ever see the people I worked with again, I would cross the street to avoid them. Yet, I’ve made friends with others I’ve worked with. Luck of the draw, so to speak.

 

She found a publisher for my first novel which sold a whopping 5,000 copies, much more than my next novel.

 

After that she concentrated on getting me non-fiction and ghost-writing assignments benefitting our pocketbooks and saving me from getting a nine-to-five corporate job. Everyone knows when you work in a corporate PR department, it’s at least a seven-to-seven job or more.

 

I’d just finished ghosting a book for a prominent scumbag politician. It paid in the six figures, the highest I’d ever made. His contract was for two million.

 

Because he’s such a scumbag, the book died, which pleased me. Also, new D.C. scandals made the topic out-of-date.

 

Talk about win-win. I didn’t have to feel guilty that I put such drivel in the public domain and my bank account was smiling.

 

Because of the large payment, for the first time in ten years, I could ease up a bit. I’m imagining myself in the south of France for the next six months, pretending I’m part of the Hemingway-Fitzgerald crowd. Sure, I know they’re all dead, but their must be writers hanging around the Côte d’Azur somewhere.

 

“How much?”

 

I imagine Barbara at her desk in her home office, a cup of cold tea on her left and her desk buried in manuscripts. She, too, gave up corporate to work for herself. Whenever, I go to New York, which is as little as possible, I stay with her. I’m a Boston girl, through and through, despite my love for France.

 

It was five years ago that I developed a hankering to live and write in France. I’d done an exchange my junior year at Boston University eons ago. I tell people I’ve a bit of French DNA that makes me long for baguettes, good wine and people-watching in cafés. The question was how could I pull that off. $50,000.

 

“$50,000 of what I just earned will buy me time in France. My mind boggles. After years of watching every penny, I suddenly have economic freedom, at least temporarily.

 

I look out the window. I’d bought a handyman’s nightmare 15 years ago. I love my street called Wigglesworth, named after a doctor at Harvard and located across the street from the medical school. I turned it into three flats. The rental from two is paying off my mortgage. Now I could rent out my flat. Hmmmm. “Describe the project in more detail. Don’t chortle, I haven’t said yes.”

 

“It’s a project funded by a woman who caught her multi-million husband cheating. Wants to show that women can do lots by themselves and even more if they band together. A I-don’t-need-men-when-we-have-each-other kind of book.”

 

“Hmmmm. Gay or straight?” I don’t care one way or another. I think of the line some of my best friends are black: Some of my best friends are gay. Some of my best lovers were straight. But it could make a difference in how I write it.

 

“Straight as far as I know. She became friends with a Boston-area lawyer who has a granddaughter in day care. The mother is also a lawyer. She has three friends with their kids in the same day car, all single moms. The help each other out. You will focus on those women, their problems, their daily lives, the support they give one another.”

 

I suppose meeting four independent women could be interesting. $50,000. Still, Massachusetts is a lot colder in winter than the Riviera. “Any more information?”

 

Barbara continues. “No research. No limitations. Just interface with the women. I think a creative non-fiction approach will work. Don’t you?”

 

One problem I’ve had writing corporate stuff or some articles are limitations. Truth is relative and color is often left out. In creative non-fiction I can create scenes, use dialogue. It’s almost as good as writing a novel.

 

Who am I kidding? When I wrote my two novels, I wasn’t in charge either. Ideas jumped into my computer. I want that to happen again when I’m in France. Maybe, I’m not being realistic, but I see France as place to nourish my creativity.

 

I say nothing. I know silence drives Barbara crazy. I’m right. She must break it. “I’ve been given a short profile of each of them. I bet you’d like them all.”

 

Some snowflakes drift by my bay window in front of my desk. Good God. Early November and snow? Timing?

 

“Four months.”

 

After I finish the book, I could spend spring and summer in France. Even fall or maybe if I’m careful winter or longer.

 

“When do I meet my client?

 

“You don’t. She’s too busy in New York.”

 

“I could fly down.”

 

“She doesn’t want a meeting, at least yet, but she’s prepared everything you need. I’ve already e-mailed you a PDF of the contract and the profiles. You could start the first appointments next week.”

 

I give Barbara some more objections, but she knows I’m going to say yes. It’s too tempting an assignment and money is too good. I can put off France for a couple of months.

 

Damn it.

Day Care Moms is available on Amazon and other sites.

Defund or Reform Police?

 

What's in a name?

Or a word.

There's so much controversy about "defunding" police as if that means cutting budgets, firing cops. This was in response to so many examples of police brutality, killings, etc. that seem totally unjustified for a civil society. 

One example https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2021/9/2?autostart=142.0

What the "defund" money was meant to do, was to cycle it into social services that can eliminate some of the problems creating situations that lead to the incidents. 

Some police forces need reforming in their hiring, education and training practices. Examples of unjustified brutality, racism, and what I'd call testosterone overload blocking non-violent solutions need to be dealt with. 

I was married to a policeman a lifetime ago. It is a hard job. I'm not anti-police. I am anti-police who shoot people in the back, beat a handcuffed man, rape a woman, confiscate money they find, etc. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/stephen-lara-nevada-asset-forfeiture-adoption/2021/09/01/6f170932-06ae-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html

It is a shame that there isn't more information about good policing like the cops, when a mother was taken to a hospital. They made dinner for her kids and stayed until a relative arrived to take over.

Or like the story from the photo above when Trooper M. Hernandez changed the young woman's flat tire on I-530N heading to Little Rock. She would have had to wait over an hour for a tow on a busy and dangerous highway.  

 

I wish the people who talk about defunding the police would talk reform. Bad cops need to go. Cops need to be well trained in conflict resolution, psychology, sociology while still know that there is a time to shoot to protect themselves and others.

 Tragedies of Abortion in America Before Roe v Wade

The landmark US Supreme Court decision in favor of legal abortion did not affect the number of babies delivered in the years following; there was, however, a drastic decline in maternal mortality.

There has always been abortion on demand for those women who do not feel they can have a baby, either by do-it-yourself with drugs or by instrument self-inflicted or assisted. There always will be abortion on demand. If abortion becomes illegal again, women will once again seek the backrooms, the motels, the shacks, the coat hangers and knitting needles. The only difference will be when abortion is illegal, will the mother die too?

Based on extensive research, including interviews with documentary filmmakers and activists, D-L Nelson describes the crusade against botched illegal abortions through the personal stories of the women who suffered, those who preyed upon or vilified them, and doctors and clergy who cared enough to get the laws changed. From Sarah Grosvenor, at the center of one of the first abortion trials in the New World ... to popular children's TV star Miss Sherri ... to Madame Restell ("the wickedest woman in New York") ... Anthony Comstock, Lawrence Lader, Bill Baird, Curtis Boyd, David Grimes, Henry Morgentaler ... the Clergy Consultation Service and the Jane Collective ... to Norma McCorvey, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, you'll learn the backstories of men, women and organizations who were key players in the abortion and birth control debate across the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The book features a detailed timeline of abortion milestones from 3000 BC to the present, plus a bibliography of books, periodicals, films / videos and websites.