Mother

  I still have many cards and notes and a few letters she wrote me and she always signed them "Mother," though we never called her that, not to any real degree anyway.  We kids called her Mommy when we were little and Ma when we got older.  She didn't seem to mind.
   She was born on March 9, 1905 in the city of Troy, the youngest of 5 children to Mr. and Mrs. Ellen O'Brien Donovan and Martin Donovan.  She had 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters.  The eldest sister, Marguerite, would succumb to the influenza epidemic in 1918; the elder brother died at the age of 18 from a fall from the scaffolding of the Cluett Peabody Building.  Siblings Matthew and Helen would live into their sunset years, but Mary was the only one of the 5 to have children.  Her father died when she was only 9 months old.  She was told that as he lay dying from the tuberculosis that was the scourge of the Irish workers, he would comment on how young she was to be able to make her way  around the rooms by holding on to the furniture. That was her only connection to him.
    Her widowed mother married widower John Hogan, and they had a daughter, Agnes, who was 9 years younger than Mary.  Agnes married Thomas Murray and they had 2 daughters and a son, the eldest daughter still living.
                  Happy Birthday, Ma.  I hope most of your 78 birthdays were happy.  I am approaching that number of birthdays myself, and I know mine were happier when you were still with us.

Tea Party

 I'm in revolt.  I refuse to be intimidated by Federal Government.  I just received another recorded call from the IRS, from a woman this time.  She said a legal case has been opened against my name, and it is important to call this number:  202-599-9660.  I could report the call, but I think it's just plain stupid.  If anyone wants to call the number be my guest.

Historical Amnesia

   I'd say I'm living in a world of deja vu, as far as the OJ Trial is concerned, because I have memories of a found knife and of "previously unaired"  clips of his interrogations. Today's young whippersnappers have no such storage in their memory banks, and neither do they have the presence of mind and the intelligence to look things up. And research is so easy now;  you'd almost think they were motivated by sensationalism.

A Dearth

   Who would ever have anticipated-----a scarcity of the Hot Cross Bun.  Admittedly, my search area is rather narrow, pretty much confined to one store.  Last year, before I realized it, the season was over , and I hadn't come across any.  This year, I looked for and found one package early in the season, and that was it.  It must be that their significance has been lost, and hot cross buns appeal only to the crumbling human infrastructure  that I unfortunately am part of.

Mitt, We hardly knew you...

  It's big of Mitt Romney to take one for the team, another one that is.  It's possible Mitt might  have been in an even more key position, such as POTUS, if the RNC had not effectively castrated him by forcing him to renege every time he said something that seemed as if he was open to discussion, and potential compromise, on any issue of policy.  So Trump was able to hijack the entire Republican Party, hoist on their own petard, as it were.
   Trump is a master manipulator, posing as a staunch conservative while espousing liberal rhetoric when it suits his purpose.  When confronted, he simply says he has changed his mind, has grown, or was misquoted or was misunderstood or the dog ate his email.  His rabid followers don't care; they have committed to him, regardless.  His Republican opponents, terrified of offending his fervid followers who are raging to cast their votes, label Trump as a lying, conniving, inexperienced, grasping belligerent racist, but still vow to support him if he secures the nomination.  Not one of them has the courage to say they could not accept him as their party's candidate.  They agreed, they say,  to do so.  Even in acknowledgment  that much of Trump's bombastic success has stemmed from his defiance of any rules or any loyalties to anyone but himself, the other candidates bury themselves in the stagnant rigidity that gave birth to the rise of the Trumpster.

Wind in the Barberry

   As  I drove past the house on the curve yesterday, where we once lived,  the wind was blowing and it triggered a memory, stored away for so many years:  It was a windy day, a rather chilly one,  and I was outside by myself.  That alone would have been unusual. The three of us, when Dorothy was old enough, were always outside together.  But that day for some reason, the others had gone inside, leaving me alone in the great outdoors.  I remember feeling a kind of freedom, and power, though I could not have been more than four years old.
     The three of us may have been in that particular  area, one somewhat closer to the road than where we usually played, and I can't recall what we were doing before the others went inside. A vivid memory, almost like a photograph,  takes me  to a somewhat bedraggled row of barberry bushes alongside the road at the end of our property.  The air is cold, the wind is blowing, and I am  a solitary figure, running back and forth through the barberries, with the brambles tearing at my clothes.  But I don't mind:  I feel strong and exhilarated, though I wouldn't have been able to describe it that way back then.  I think I must have felt that each time I made it through the thicket, I was accomplishing something on my own, doing something no one else had ever done or would ever know about.
    Even to this day, there is something about wind that is a a little bit thrilling, and ominous in its potential.  Eerie, in fact.

Party Platform

  Declarations after Victory, Sort of
Hillary:   I'm interested in taking down barriers, not building walls.
Trump:   After this, I'm going after Hillary.