My favorite quote from the title movie is “Hope is a good thing. It may be the best thing.”

Trump’s national health plan has been flushed down the toilet. In return, there is a bubbling up of that “good thing”: I feel hopeful for the first time in many months. Hopeful for my personal well being and hopeful for the sanctity of our society.

I did my happy dance. I laughed out loud. Today was a good day.

Not to be pre-mature or greedy, but… I want some more, please. On and on. “I just keep trying. And I smile when I feel like crying. On and on. On and on. On and on.”

Let the good, better, best times roll.

(I’m in such an up mood since the health care bill was killed.)
(Get it?) (Irony.)

Let’s pretend, shall we?
Let’s just say for one moment, if you will indulge me, that he’s telling the truth. Let’s give him something he would never give anyone: the benefit of the doubt.

OK – if we can agree to those (difficult to swallow) ground rules, we will say, “Yeah, OK, Mr. T. Your phone was tapped during the campaign by a bad and/or sick dude.”

Are you with me so far?

To me, that broadcast statement is the same as a perfect stranger stopping me on the sidewalk and ranting: “You know what that misery of a landlord did to me? He shut off my heat!”

Although my empathy for the cold tenant would probably preclude me from actually saying this, my game playing answer to the tenant would be exactly the same as my response to Mr. T: “Oh really? Why tell me? IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM!”

My more targeted answer to the guy who actually made the statement about his phone being tapped and the...

Last night’s Oscar awards show was the best ever. Truly dignified, well produced, funny, clever (candy from heaven?!) the awards pretty much all went to the correct recipients who spoke with equal parts of heart and intelligence. AND as a grand finale, they staged Hollywood’s version of
fake news!

“La La La…….” No….wait…… “Moonliiiiiiiiiiiii…..”

It’s such an absurdly bad ending to an otherwise great script that it would never have been green-lighted by anyone sitting in that audience, or anywhere else.

The best thing about it is that it will give the late night comedians new and different material as a refreshing change from what they’ve had to work with in the last many months.

So: THANK YOU, HOLLYWOOD!!!! Could only happen in the real La La Land.

IT’S OSCAR NIGHT!!!!

When I lived I Portland, an invite to my Oscar party was a hot ticket. As we were West Coasters and as the Oscars started at a civilized cocktail hour on the West Coast, invitees came over straight from work or scooted away from home leaving someone else to feed and bathe the kids. I enforced a strict dress code: you could wear anything you wanted, but you HAD to wear
F – – – Me high heels.

With those as your entry ticket, we enjoyed great drinks, fabo cuisine (sushi, for example, was exotic in those days), and endless desserts. We had tally sheets and there were prizes for those who predicted the most winners. Pre-internet, big-screens and cell-phones, we had side-by-side TVs and a direct open phone line with my friend in Boston who is a fashion designer, so we could all dis the fashions bi-coastally.

Jesse got to see his mother and her friends at their utmost...

Like most things – it happened in an unforeseeable flash. One second my cell phone was sitting on the edge of my sink. The next, it was in the water. In half of the next, I pulled it out.

I’ll leave the details of the middle of the story out — the two trips to my local Apple store, one round trip to my sister’s house as she offered me the phone she had recently replaced with a newer version in case mine was permanently waterlogged, and the part about letting my little darlin’ sit in rice. I’ll skip all the fear, horror and alone-in-the-dark parts, and slide right to the happy ending:

On my second and final trip to the Genius Bar, my phone came to life. Perfectly intact as she was before, all info still in there, able to do all the tricks she had always been able to do. As if her brief dunk in my sink had never happened. A non-event.

So why am I bothering to write about this at all...

I have gotten my license and am now an official DC Tour Guide. I will be taking busloads of high school students from around the world on tours of DC as an employee of WorldStrides. They ask a lot of their employees. They handed me a guidebook of 86 pages, each with a different monument or attraction on it, and questions that I need to be able to answer. As the answers are not there, I need to research them myself. For example: at the Jefferson Memorial, on the back side of Tom’s statue there are four symbols carved into his shoe. What are the symbols and what do they mean?
I have a lot of work to do before I am ready for my first gig in June.

What I HAVE done in preparation, in addition to obtaining the license, is:

1. Got a TB shot (negative: I do not have TB)
2. Got my passport, driver’s license, SS card et al notarized
3. Signed a pile of forms giving out all the information that...

Mother and I were sitting side by side on the edge of her bed.
A standard hospital bed with sides that went up and down, and cranks to raise and lower the head or feet, as needed. The bed was in her sunny bedroom in an elegant apartment in the building in which Jesse and I had previously lived for three years. She had been there with me and a caregiver of ultimate worth for several months. We would live together for five more years.

There was a long pause after she managed to articulate those two questions. That she could speak them must have taken superhuman concentration and desire on her part as she had not uttered a complete sentence since becoming ill. The pause was my time to try to compose answers to these profound and seemingly unanswerable questions. Answers that she could possibly understand despite her greatly diminished mental state. Answers that I could utter without...

In the fairy tale, Hans Brinker had it easy. In his story, there was only one hole in the dike that needed to be plugged in order to save his homeland from going under. At this moment, it’s hard to know which hole to plug first so we can hold back the roiling tides and keep our homeland from going under.

This is not a story I am creating out of thin air. It is history repeating itself.
As that is the case, what lessons have we learned from history that we can use now to insure that hideous consequences do not again occur?

I can’t think of a thing.

The decision to eliminate NEA funding, including de-funding public broadcasting, got my heart racing. I think that was a good thing – as until then my heart was just numb. I think racing is preferable to numbness. Since then (only a week ago?!!) I have had undifferentiated rage. I feel like I have been bounced around - POW! take THAT! now...

DC has always been famous for its cherry blossoms. Yesterday, a new strain flooded the premises, filling all nooks and crannies with pink.

May they bloom and grow.