My partner and I had a wonderful dinner date with a wonderful couple last night. They are hysterically funny and great storytellers. I have tried but I can’t capture the essence of the true, and truly hilarious, stories. So, I won’t. Thank you, friends. And I will protect your identities if I am able to capture a bloggable moment from our dinner.
The husband of the couple did advise me how not to make my blog controversial. Ooooops. Too late. But then I always leap before I look.
The only thing that made you less despicable than the worst human ever was that you seemed to be a good husband who protected your wife and possible co-conspirator. This was your only redemptive quality. It elevated you from crook to thief.
Ok, Bernie. Look at you. It wasn’t your good looks or witty repartee that landed you a mistress. You are a shlub. But you had a lot of other people’s money. And for a long time, it bought you a mirror that when you looked in it, Superman looked back.
NEW YORK – Bernard Madoff‘s decades-long fraud might not have been his only secret. A new book says he had a two-decade affair with one of his investors.
That’s in a memoir by Sheryl Weinstein titled “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me.” It goes on sale Aug. 25.
A spokesman for book publisher St. Martin’s Press said Friday the relationship between Weinstein and Madoff spanned more than 20 years. Both were married.
Madoff is serving 150 years in prison for defrauding investors. Weinstein says she met him when she was chief financial officer for the charitable women’s organization Hadassah.
Madoff attorney Ira Sorkin says he hopes the author “was more discreet with her investment obligations than she has allegedly been with her sex life.”
An attorney for Madoff’s wife, Ruth Madoff, says his client didn’t know about the “alleged affair.”
Ok, I am a little behind on the latest Reality (which is, as Lily Tomlin said, for people who can’t deal with drugs). I thought the Kardashians were an alien species on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since there was a Star Trek craze this summer (spring?), it seemed on-the-edge of reasonable.
So, now I know they have nothing to do with Star Trek, although the little I have read about them suggests that they are IN FACT an alien species.
I don’t need to watch someone else’s reality. Mine is hard enough to follow.
The only reason to feel sorry for this Charles Manson follower and would-be assassinator of our then President Ford, is that she is 60 years old and STILL she is called Squeaky. Is Lynette such a bad name?
Do you think she is different now? It is hard to imagine a 60 year-old Manson follower. It is like imagining your grandparents’ having sex. But not as gross. Eeewww. Eeeeewwww. I need to stop now.
I’m guessing this is what my mother (of blessed memory) would comment on my blog.
Hi, darling! [said with a thrill that only a mother could have in corresponding with her child]:
Please be careful. There are crazies out there who might be reading your blog. So, I called the Secret Service. They are so efficient; the person who answered knew exactly who I was. Technology is SO marvelous. I asked for protection for you. The agent wasn’t sure, so I called the White House and they said that I looked marvelous at the last march on the Mall. Who knew? I wasn’t feeling great that day, chemo and all, so it must have been my new wig. Thank Goodness your father was there. He takes such good care of me. When I went over to talk to anti-abortion people, they were very nasty and your father stepped in. My ovaries haven’t worked in decades, so why couldn’t they have a civil conversation on a theoretical level? Which proves my point about protection for you.
Your sister came along on the march as my physician. (Isn’t it a MUST to have a health care professional in the family? Don’t worry, I remember how you helped get me a $200 rebate so paying for law school was worth it.) Having a travelling doctor IS the new accessory for us old people. I have Dad and your sister. Let the Secret Service top that for Obama. By the way, isn’t he handsome? So smart, so funny, such a leader. If only he were Jewish and not married, he would be perfect for your sister if she weren’t already happily married to a wonderful man (I am not schlepping in Central Park to look at birds). After all of these years of keeping an eye out for eligible men, it is hard to remember to stop looking now that she is married. I forget things at my age, but I am always thrilled when I remember that she is, in fact, married.
You looked thin last week. Is there enough protein in your diet?
Well, off to chemo, then a gallery and then there’s a protest at One Police Plaza. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get arrested. I have your card in case I need a lawyer. One should get arrested for a good cause once in one’s life. But only for peaceful protests.
So, all right, Tootsie. See you for Sunday night dinner.
Love, Mom
After a fitful night’s sleep, my son wanted to pretend we were trains this morning before he scampered off to camp. After going to Penn Station to watch all of the trains recently (like one big electric train set), he wanted me to call out the Ronkonkoma, Long Island train station, in that sing-song way that the conductors do, while stressing the Ks: “RON KONKKK KOMA!! RON KONKKK KOMA!!” I am half asleep and yelling “RON KONKKK KOMA!” RON KONKKK KOMA!” It makes my head pound but my son’s delight makes it worthwhile.
No turning over and napping after this day’s version of morning cuddle. Coffee and aspirin. Antacids (for the burning caused by the coffee and aspirin). Repeat until fully conscious.
Once fully conscious, I turn on the TV to have, as Jon Stewart has said, my morning cup of sadness. Today, RAGE accompanies sadness. I blog my rant against Glenn Beck. I feel better.
I shower and dress. I even pack gym clothes. Wow, amazing what a morning’s expiation will do.
I eat lunch with an old friend with whom I have recently reconnected. We laugh all through lunch about everything and nothing and I feel like a weight is lifted. Laughter is the best antidote to life’s sadnesses and ills.
Drink a cup of laughter next time you have the opportunity.
I would also like to note that Rabbi David Saperstein gave my brother a job right out of college about 28 years ago in an organization with a mandate for social justice. Rabbi, you have been at it all these years. Thank you.
From CNN, August 11, 2009
Religious groups in favor of health care reform have launched a national campaign to offset the loud opposition to President Obama’s plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system, organizers announced.
“This is as much a crisis of faith as it is a crisis of health care,” said the Rev. John Hay Jr., senior pastor of West Morris Street Free Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“We just believe there is a better way.”
He and others spoke in a telephone news conference Monday announcing the campaign.
“As a pastor, I believe access to health care is a profoundly moral issue,” said the Rev. Stevie Wakes of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas.
The campaign, called “40 days for Health Reform,” includes a national television advertisement, a “sermon weekend,” prayer meetings and a nationwide call-in with Obama on August 19, organizers said.
Prayer meetings emphasizing health care as a moral issue were taking place Tuesday in 45 cities across 18 states, organizers said. They expected about 4,000 people to participate.
“Healing and health are fundamental religious issues,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, one of the sponsors of the campaign along with PICO National Network, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
Wallis stressed that participants in the campaign are not going to weigh in on particular policy questions. “It isn’t political in a partisan way,” he said. “This is a fundamental moral issue. … You’re going to hear the moral drumbeat of the faith community.”
Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who also spoke on the conference call, said the current system “doesn’t work for everyone.”
Other groups, such as the Christian Coalition of America and the Family Research Council, are strongly opposed to Democratic proposals to overhaul the health care system, saying, among other things, that they would lead to government-funded abortion.
“We don’t want abortion to enter this debate and sabotage health care reform,” Wallis said. He noted the legislation now being discussed on Capitol Hill is far from a final version.
Opponents of health care reform proposals have confronted U.S. lawmakers at town hall meetings in recent days, drawing heavy media attention with their boisterous protests.
I am sitting in a restaurant and there are nine loud girls and one guy celebrating one of the girls’ birthday. Rachel is her name. They are impossibly young, loud and full of energy. They are maybe two years out of college. I am transported back 22 years when a bunch of us lived in NYC post-college and we were similarly impossibly young, loud and full of energy. Instead of being annoyed, I am comforted by this scene. In my mind’s eye, I see OUR group of friends with mid-80s hairdos (one with especially puffy hair) and outfits (shoulder pads a la the TV Show, Dynasty).
I wouldn’t trade places with them for a second. The life I imagined for me back then bears no resemblance to the actual course of my life so far and I am happy for the difference.
And their possibilities are limited only by the passage of time and that is a hard and heart-breaking lesson. If I had one thing to tell these girls it would be : freeze your eggs (assuming the technology gets better) or freeze embryos. Time waits for no one. That’s years and years away and, yet, it goes so fast.
It seems like yesterday that I was 22 or 23. I still act about 12, which still makes me more mature than my 7 year-old but barely.
Life is beautiful. It just goes so fast.
Have fun, girls, and remember what I said.
I was a skinny, athletic kid, until 16. From 16 to 22, I was hefty (a term I find preferable to chunky, heavy or the big “O” word). Since 22, I have slimmed down and, while not so athletic anymore at 45, I am fit. Every now and again, when I recount my years of being “two tons of fun”, people are often disbelieving and want to see the fat pictures.
Well they surfaced on Facebook, courtesy of a college friend to whom I haven’t spoken in years and years and, after this, may not for many years to come. Ok, I am exaggerating. I’ll talk to him at our 60th college reunion because we will both be senile.
I can honestly say I have been the trifecta of fat, dumb and happy — all at once and at different times.
Ah, the joys and perils of connectivity.
It is your home and its value is that your kids or loved ones will inherit it (and make some money).
People who bought them as investment properties have lost them and some are homeless. If you want to be a house as an investment property, then buy a second home but you have to afford it like you do other investments, you use what you have and you don’t borrow.