A LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

The Common Man is a local bar, typically patronized as its name suggests. Once a year the owner provides a free buffet of ribs, chicken wings, meatballs, sausage, fried rice, and a plethora of other things I was not hungry enough to try. My neighbors, who frequent the place regularly, invited me to come with them. Free meals don't tempt me but pool tables do.

Despite the economy which is clearly threatening many of the customers, the ambiance was cheerful, friendly and fun. Looking around the two rooms, fairly open to one another, there were lots of ways for the owner to make money without forcing liquor on people. It looked somewhat like an arcade, coin machines offering games of skill, others of chance, were sprinkled all over the walls. Keno feeds the gambling instinct for money. I somehow, fortunately, did not inherit a gambling gene, figuring surviving life was about as much of a gamble as my spring loaded nervous system will safely endure. I try not to tempt the law of averages negatively.

There were dartboards on the wall and at the far end of the room a coin operated pool table. The owner and I paired off against a couple of guys who had been playing much of the afternoon. My forty years of rusting showed significantly as I commented that I couldn't seem even to shovel a ball into a pocket! Fortunately for our team, he was good, having worked for many years as a young man in a place with a table and obviously having benefited from a good eye and practice.

I'd also forgotten that, in these neighborhood bars, everyone either knew each other before they got there or left later knowing one another. I was clearly an anomaly by age, occupation, and not having grown up locally. Nevertheless, I was kindly tolerated much as a two-headed frog might be at a carnival. Actually, that may not be fair. I felt like the two-headed frog but cannot say I was treated as such by anyone. The WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union)started in 1873. The evening showed me clearly why they were not successful in well more than a Century. I'm still confused about a group with Christian in its name can be considered non-sectarian but that applies to my concrete view of words. It is not the neighborhood bar that is the problem. Alcoholics will obtain liquor anywhere, even if they have to make their own! In this world that keeps people more isolated than ever, sitting in front of computers and other lonely pursuits, it is a nice place to socialize.

MORE GUNS? WHY?

The NRA and Co. have pushed campaigns to allow concealed-weapons permits on college campuses in 15 states this year and failed in all of them.

There is a NRA - ILA (National Rifle Association- Institute of Legislative Action). They would like to allow people to carry guns in National Parks.

Once the worst parents feared was that their college kid would flunk out or get a girl pregnant. In today's world they just hope that their offspring will get enough of an education to make them self-supporting and that they will be alive to graduate.

Growing up on a suburban farm or 140 acres pre-WWII, my father and brothers had loaded shotguns and 22s (rifles). Their purpose was two-fold, to protect the animals that needed protection, and to shoot a meal. They were never considered toys nor was ammo wasted on target play once a gun was mastered (Usually by owning a b-b gun first to practice with. Visiting A young cousin who visited and was not brought up on the farm was curious and lacking in impulse control. He found a 22 where it had been placed in a closet or wherever, and being unfamiliar with its deadliness, shot it in the house (probably by accident), missing his mother's head by an inch or so.

We deny the under 21 the right to drink alcohol, forcing them to act out by drinking too much and causing deadly automobile accidents as well as arming them to commit crimes and deadly violence. Does any intelligent person believe that these weapons are really to arm a militia in the event of Revolutionary, Civil, Global War or against terrorosts? Wasn't that the intent of our forefathers in granting the right to bear arms? We were still stealing the country from the Indians just a hundred years ago, weren't we? Whom do we need to fight in college?

IMPRESSIONS FROM A HOSPITAL LOBBY

Sitting in a hospital lobby for an hour or two is, to a people watcher, like watching an action-packed movie. The lobby is new, spacious, and almost a city block long. The front is all glass so that one can see if the valet parkers have brought a car out to the front. Opposite the front revolving door is a registration desk, one of the many in the hospital.

I sat near the end of the lobby, close to the door where all garage users have to stop to pay the ticket to park before picking up their car. Thus a constant parade of humanity walked by me. The first thought was, "Why do we have English and Spanish when there are so many other languages clearly in use?"

A couple, he using a cane, she a walker, sauntered slowly by. Others walked by swiftly, leather heels clicking loudly on the marble part of the floor. Next to that marble was a curvy area of rug on which sat clusters of comfortable chairs for people waiting. Some people carefully wove back and forth in the snake-like line the rug made on the floor so that they could silently walk only on the rug.

As with all confusing buildings housing many services, signage is really important. People entering from the garage often seemed to wander around trying to read signs that obviously weren't pointing to wherever they wished to go. In one area I had followed restroom signs only to end up in a dead end where what might have been restroom doors had signs, handwritten on 8.5" x 11" paper informing one that the doors were closed but sometime in the near future would be restrooms. I wondered why signage went up before service and then decided that it was probably a more usual sequence of things than I cared to admit. Others were clearly frequent callers who quickly pointed themselves in the right direction.

Once, I had a brief conversation with a gentleman, waiting for his son to retrieve their car. We started with the usual observation about how cold it is outside, moving then to noting that it is too early in the year for it to be so cold, that shouldn't happen until January. He lamented that by Wednesday it was supposed to be 60 degrees (under 20 degrees at the moment). The conversation went as predicted...onward to global warming after which his car was brought out of the garage. The gentleman thanked me for the chat, I wished him Happy Holidays, and off he went.

Later my amusement came watching and listening to some lady-in-charge on her wireless phone telling engineering that they should program the doors so they would not simultaneously open and let all the cold air in. She insisted that the programming could be done while the person on the other end, one would guess, didn't know how to do it. This conversation went on for rather a long time and I pictured some of the other things she might be called on to do, like phone in that someone tracked slippery mud onto the floor on the West end of the lobby, or any other interesting concern of the day.

To my surprise, I felt I had landed in a time warp when I saw, separately, two women in fur coats. One a long mink and the other a sheared beaver. In five years of frequent BSO Symphony attendance it is a sight rarely seen that a woman comes into the hall in fur. I confess, I wondered, even if they owned them, why they would wear them for all the daytime world to see in a hospital. I decided they must have been really cold.

The sound of shoes was a study unto itself. There were loud clinks and clunks made by clogs, stealth athletic shoes that made no sound (except when the walker 'slapped' feet onto the floor), boots with spiked heels which sounded like a two-legged horse cantering down the marble floor. If one tried to guess, rather than see, the walker with with a gym shoe on one foot and a cast on the other, would have been difficult. Lots of 'fragrant' women waddled by, termed by those unable to use the word pregnant because of the image of the act that caused the condition was unspeakable. I've always wondered what it is beyond the incest taboo which disallows children to imagine there parents having sex, as though sex began with their own young generation.

My last fascination was with gait. Some almost raced with purposeful steps and some walked slowly, lumbering along with shuffling feet and a wide stance reminding one of toddlers learning to walk with an uncomfortably full diaper. Throughout the time I waited, I realized I had read not more than a page or two of the book before me. I decided I was hopeless at reading in public because I could not keep myself from being distracted by the wave of humanity passing me by, leaving me wondering what brought them there.

ARRESTS AT THE TOP

There can be nothing but admiration for Special Counsel Fitzgerald in Illinois. In the 50's, when I lived in Chicago, it was often spoken that, if you go on vacation, don't tell the police to watch your house or you will come home to an empty one. If you can't trust the police, you distrust politicians as well. A few years later, priests were added to the list of whom not to trust. When dishonesty is as accepted as it has been in so many areas in our country, especially in the past eight years, its escalation seems contagious.

In the past few years we have seen lots of politicians involved with money in graft, illegal services, open thievery, eg. Stevens in Alaska, but the media gets more mileage from sexual misdemeanors, eg. Spitzer, Clinton, Larry-What's-his-name, and too many others to mention.

Today there was news more striking. Patrick Fitzgerald, announced the charges he had made against the current governor of Illinois.

Regardless of Blagojevich's frequent utterances
that he has not done wrong, the voice captures
certainly appear that they will prove him quite
guilty. It appears, further, that the government
hen house is full of foxes. It takes a lot of
chutzpah to act as the governor does and sound as
grandiose as he does. The clinical part of me
wonders if he is in a manic episode. That still
would be no excuse, but it might help to explain his apparent stupidity.

An AP article says the Governor has gone beyond greed. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested, accused of trying to trade the Senate seat left vacant by US President-elect Barack Obama.

Mr Blagojevich, as governor, has sole authority to select a successor to Mr Obama as junior Illinois senator. FBI investigators said telephone intercepts showed he was trying to sell or trade the seat for personal benefit.

Prosecutors said Mr Obama, who is not close to Mr Blagojevich, was not involved in the alleged wrongdoing. That's nice to hear but if there are those out there still fighting that his birth certificate isn't legitimate, will they listen to the prosecutors and believe them? I can only hope so.

LIARS NEVER DIE; THEY JUST KEEP LYING THERE

There are still some Republicans who are itching to find some way to get Obama out of his President-Elect status. The lies on the Internet are not new about his allegedly false birth certificate. It would be very surprising if all those documents had not been verified long before this time. He has been, after all, in the United States Senate...don't they check people's ID and credentials?

With misleading sites like America Must Know Another site worth knowing is always there waiting A few for you. A few weeks ago, a zealous neighbor insisted that i check out a YouTube that proved that Obama is not legally our President. The picture of the presumed 'phony' birth certificate was on YouTube (still may be though I haven't looked again).Only at her insistence did I humor her and paid for it by getting caught in a pre-fetch that took me a very long time to get my computer back to normal working again.

Just add it to the list: The holocaust didn't happen; 9/11 was a US conspiracy, etc. This is another one.

POLITICAL UNREST EXISTS EVERYWHERE

Greece is currently in the control of a Conservative government. There are protests both peaceful and violent against the government. Greece braced for further protest
Protester clashes with riot police in Athens Pitched battles involved tear gas and petrol bombs

Protests are expected for a third day in Greece, following rioting over the fatal shooting of a teenager by police.

In cities across the country, dozens of protesters and police were injured during pitched battles on the streets, involving petrol bombs and tear gas.

Some protesters stayed in universities on Sunday night, while leftist groups planned rallies on Monday.

The government has called for an end to the violence, saying justice had been served with the arrests of policemen.

The riots began on Saturday after 15-year-old Andreas Grigoropoulos was shot dead by police in the Exarchia area of Athens.

You can see some film on this.

Protests are sad to me because they represent the complete helplessness felt by the people who participate in them. They seem as useless as blood letting was a couple of centuries ago. Death and destruction are not the way to solve problems but the youth of every culture seem not to learn that one. The protests too often become the temper tantrums learned as children. The peaceful protests are like the children who would hold their breath and turn blue to scare their parents, or refuse to eat. In this age of media, one would think these bright young minds would drown the institutions with writing new ideas and solutions to the problems rather than what they are doing to innocent merchants and citizens as well as the poor police who are just trying to keep their jobs by following orders. Ah well, there should have been more 'Rosa Parks' born throughout the world.

FEMINISM TODAY?

The dictionary describes feminism as: 1895 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests. Maureen Dowd recently did an interview of Fey and to the eye of someone who lived and worked through the early Feminism War from the 60's to today, Fey come out as a Feminist's dream. She is married to a man whom she loves, has a three year old daughter, managed a career of creativity that most women would drool to be able to achieve, and seems to have very clear boundaries for herself.

She has gained and lost weight a few times in the past few years and is now at a low weight, being pictured in glamorous poses in glamor magazines. What a lovely way to sock it to the world that thinks that a career woman loses something if she gives in to the urge to look glamorous in magazines for all men and women to see. Fey is proving that a glamorous woman can love and respect a male as a partner, have children, and does not have to behave in an unfeminine way to work and succeed in what is mostly a man's world.

Tina Fey, a successful wife, mother, actress (actor), comedienne (comedian), writer, and a woman for whom all in her gender can be proud, envious, add recognize that more is doable than latching onto a man for security and dependence. Sometimes a woman can marry for love, companionship, and partner to have and to raise children. She can even add to that, a distinct identity of her own