The age of aquarius: he remembered

I awoke at 7:30 this morning, the littler cat in my arms, Audouin's hand on my chest where it had come to rest in his sleep, and the sun shining beyond the sheet hung in the window to keep the eyes of the workers from penetrating the privacy of our room, and when I came down after Audouin had gone to the hospital, I found the note above and the following in my email in-box:

At dawn on 14th February the day dedicated to St. Valentine, the patron saint of Love, the Moon in Libra enters the seventh house of relationships. And Jupiter and Mars are aligned in Aquarius in the twelfth house of spiritual transformation.

Forty years ago, the intuitive words of a song called Aquarius brought the dawning of the new age into our collective awareness:

When the Moon is in the seventh house
and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Then love will rule the planets
and peace will steer the stars

At dawn on 14th February the Cosmos actually embodies this perfect alignment to support our collective manifestation of love and peace and dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

The Aquarian chart of 14th February reveals an incredible concentration of cosmic influences blending with the energies of Aquarius in the twelfth house. Expansive Jupiter and energetic Mars are aligned with the higher purpose of the North Node. The presence of Chiron the wounded healer offers us the opportunity to heal the schisms that have separated us for so long. Neptune emphasizes collective humanitarian movements and the co-creation of social justice. And the presence of the radiant Sun enlightens the entire alignment.

Mercury also in the twelfth house but just beyond the cusp in Capricorn, allies with transformational Pluto to communicate and anchor the Shift throughout our global structures and institutions.

The Moon in Libra in the seventh house emphasizes harmonious relationships.

Venus in Aries in the first house energizes and empowers dynamic co-creativity.

And whilst Saturn the great task master in opposition to Uranus the unexpected awakener is suggesting an ongoing confrontation as the dregs of the unsustainable old paradigm reluctantly give way to the untested hope of the new, their placements in Virgo and Pisces brings practical altruism and visionary inspiration to the transition.

At 7.25am on 14th February - and f or the 18 minutes of the alignment, I invite you, in the universal heart, to add your own intention f or love and peace and to co-create the dawning of the Age of Aquarius to that of the Cosmos.

Hair, the film -- 1979

Maybe the Age of Aquarius was really dawning when we sang along in Susan Lowitz's split-level ranch playroom in 1968, second-graders liberated by song. We graduated high school in 1979, and the musical will be revived in March in this Age of Aquarius, in the year a man with a black father and a white mother took the oath of office as president of the United States, 2009.

I am a Libra. My husband is Aries, ruled by the planet Mars. Maybe we are entering, despite the conflicting signs in the pyrotechnics of our relationship, a time of harmony and understanding,
sympathy and trust abounding.

Then, there is the reconnection to our half-sister, our father's third daughter, bringing a brother-in-law and three nephews (I chatted with 4-year-old Colin, my little twin, on Facebook, "efskjdah fsifsoeh ehsoien"). Elizabeth will see her Monday, after 43 years. I will see her in May, when the peonies are in bloom in the beds at the edge of the top terrace. This was never considered possible, but she says she has been smiling this past week, and that "it has made [her] very happy". I don't use words like "happy", although I do smile. Maybe I will.

How can one doubt now that we are in the Age of Aquarius? Call the astronomers.

I'd like to take the other thing I found when I came downstairs as a sign. There it is, at the top of the post. It only looks like general conditions of repair and payment for the BMW garage. It is actually a Valentine's Day card.

You can tell by the heart and the words, "Valentine's Day".

It is a love note.

You can tell from the words, "I love you".

A very subtle Valentine's Day love note. So subtle that if Wisp hadn't been sitting on it when I stopped to give her a good morning pet, I might have missed it, although I do doubt that I would have put it away without seeing the heart drawn with my O.3 drawing pen on the back of the repair bill for the repairs after the attempted theft of the poor old BMW.

Pst? Have you signed the Courage Campaign petition to invalidate Prop 8, Ken Starr's appalling attack on the gay couples who married in California between May and November 2008, divorcing them? The deadline has been extended; you have until March 2 now, but why not sign today, Valentine's Day?


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.


I resume my story.

I didn't remind him when he left for his day and night on duty at the hospital. I only reminded him that it is his godson Hugues' birthday. 19.

"Oui, j'essayerai de l'appeler de l'hôpital, et ce fut l'anniversaire d'Aude avant hier."

"J'espère que tu as pensé de l'appeler," dis-je, a tiny bit mockingly, thinking to match very considerately his feelings for his first wife.

(Je suis désolée, Aude, mais c'est vrai. Il y a des choses que vous n'auriez pas du faire, et dire. Vous le savez, je le sais.)

"Non, je n'y ai pas pensé." He sounded too normal. There was no mocking. He'd have called his first wife to wish her a happy birthday? The story of the years following their marriage explain why that wouldn't come immediately to mind. I was confused. Aude. Hugues. Godson. Aude... Goddaughter.

"Ah, ça serait gentil de l'appeler, quand-même." I didn't miss a beat. Morning sluggishness of thought covers many things. The world made sense again.

"On ne fêtes pas son anniversaire à jamais quand on devient grand." I thought of those who love to celebrate their birthdays at 50 and gone.

"Ce n'est pas vrai. Les Floris ne fêtent pas les leurs, et ne l'ont jamais fait. Ce n'est pas la même chose." Audouin and his sister put their feet down. No birthday parties. Not even the 50th. I lost on Audouin's 50th. The friends carried the day. I hadn't been around long enough, even though I knew many of them as far back as when he was still married to Aude (the other one). The proof was when my brother-in-law put his foot down in the case of his wife's 40th last year, and the email frenzy that ressembled the French massing in the streets to demonstrate another projet de loi -- Non à pas de fête! Non à pas de fête! -- very suddenly ceased. He'd been around long enough, fathered their four children, tended the seasonal pruning needs of his parent's-in-law's two properties' gardens (and I'm stretching the word for the one in the southwest) to put his foot down and not receive collective punishment of our many friends and large family.

But, that's not really true from the one family photo album I finally saw at my in-law's house at New Year's. My mother-in-law has rarely had a camera, battery and film in the same place at the same time for the important occasions, so this album seemed something like a miracle. A series of baby photos and first birthdays, with a growing number of older siblings surrounding the baby in front of the cake. I had looked for give-away traits in the one-yea- old faces to see if I could tell which baby it was from the adult I know, without reading the caption, or identifying the siblings present, either. I couldn't.

And, my husband does not celebrate Valentine's Day. I am not sure he has ever left a "mot" [note] to mark the occasion. That's so American. So Hallmark. So commercial.

Written on the back of the BMW garage receipt of payment for the car I recovered and drove yesterday for the first time in 3 months today, that is so Audouin.

I still wonder why he loves me and now he can, when you hear our arguments about child-raising and the concept of growth in the economy. My heart rages in my chest for Paul Krugman when he castigates all the economists in the world for being in bed with the forces of corporate and financial evil. I just can't feel romantic when my husband is more than suggesting that he would call his congressman to vote no on the ARRP and let the economic system that he considers to be riddled by the cancer of credit die. Not even as the clock approaches midnight, the eve of Valentine's Day.

"Et tous ces gens qui perdraient leur emplois, les millions de personnes et de familles sans les moyens de payer la maison, la voiture, le fioul pour chauffer leur maison, la nourriture pour manger, les frangs pour s'habiller. Tu laisserais le système économique s'arrêter? Ce n'est plus possible. On ne peut pas l'arrêter pour le recréer. On ne peut le redémarrer et le corriger avec les réglementations mises en place au juste apèrs la dernière grosse crise en enlevées par Phil Gramm et compagnie dans le sénat en 1999 avec l'abrogation de l'act Glass-Steagall, chose que les Republicans ont cherché à faire depuis les 1980's. Le système a toujours, toujours fonctionné avec le crédit, depuis que l'échange de commerce entre les pays et les peuples a commencé. Ce qu'il faut c'est de l'honnêteté dans la valuation et l'offre et la demande de crédit." He wasn't buying that, other than the honesty aspect, which he more than agrees is missing, replaced by a glut of avidité.

It was barter, he said. Barter in the village markets. Yes, but the barons seized what they needed, or sometimes paid against time or other services, whose value had to be determined. Not quite like a barrel of grain for a chicken. And once the boats started to arrive in the ports, loaded with silk from the East, slips of money changed hands in the port city to pay for the cargo and the risk to the boat and the contents of its hold assumed by the financier of the voyage.

"Mais ce n'était pas jusqu'au 18ème siécle!"

"Tu n'as jamais lu le Marchand de Vénise?" And on and on, until he declared that the discussion was over. I continued.

"C'est fini. On n'en discute plus."

"Mais..."

"Fini. On fait la vaiselle." I got a few more words in, and dumped the boiled water from the cheap saucepan onto the pile of dishes in the sink. I heard the glass in which I had noticed a horizontal crack crack farther. I'll use it until the milk or water served at table leaks out, or the top half of the glass falls off. I hate waste, almost as much as I hate credit interest myself.

But, you can't run a world economy on direct payment for all services. I had brought up Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel for his program of microloans in Bangladesh. How could you argue against credit when presented in those terms?

"Le Nobel ne veut rien dire pour moi."

Ce n'est pas possible. I hadn't mentioned Paul Krugman, nor his shiny new Nobel. I couldn't bear to hear it shot down.

He was asleep before I turned off my laptop and came up the stairs, the light extinguished in the larger crack under the door, where the floor boards plunge towards the end wall of the house. I brushed my teeth, examined the signs of another day on my face, and turned out the bathroom light. Wisp got caught beneath my feet and took off for the the stairs. I opened the door for her, and she turned on a dime, trotted into the room and waited to install herself in my arms, like a baby, her head on my shoulder, her body curled in the crook of my elbow for the night.

My funny Valentine.

And my funnier, nearly incomprehensible, far too prickly Valentine, off at the hospital.

Peace and love.
....

after the money's gone

Can we hear from the disappointed, bitter decent Republicans who feel like, "This is not my Republican party! My God!... what have I done?" Now that all the money's gone.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

During the campaign, I wondered if the GOP would rise up, rise up and toss the lunatic fringe overboard, reclaim their party for the fiscally conservative, socially tolerant among you -- there must be some there, no? -- and make the other ones go form their own party, like Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National in France. A radical, racist, socially conservative, anti-immigration nationalist party merely capable of splintering an election result, not taking over a country as the neocons did for 8 years.

Same as it ever was.

Trust me, George IV did more to make sure that won't happen in France any time soon than Le Pen could dreamed have accomplishing, although he did manage to do a number on those who flirted with fire, showing their frustration with criminality and unemployment by voting for him in round one against Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who should have been in the second round against Chirac.

Perhaps you could take an idea from this country of the Enlightenment philosophy that spawned The United States of America (if you believe it wasn't purely economically motivated; when Enlightenment sheep lie down with the lions of commerce, a great democracy is born) with more than a smidgen of hubris. Ahem.

Believe your principles of social justice, honor your rule of law that protects every citizen from another, maintain a separation of church and state and keep your main political parties aligned with the axis of your constitution and towards the center of the bell-curve of society, rather than out at its screaming extremes.

What's that? The gays are the extreme? When they are asking to marry and raise a family, not have a quickie in the men's room at Minneapolis St.Paul International Airport?

Nah, think again.

Hey, let's look at this together again... then, pst! Do something... sign the petition and send it along before Valentine's Day...


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Stick rather, Barack (sorry, we were classmates, so it's hard to get used to calling you "Mr. President" and "President Obama"), to your sense of what is right and wrong and, as Jericho said, talk not to the politicians, but to those who vote for them. Talk straight from your principles, using your considerable oratorical power to reach them. Tell them why what is uncomfortable is yet right, why what is cause of fear is yet worth finding a little courage for. Be a leader and continue to lead us to a better society, a better country, a finer hour in history like you did throughout the campaign. This is no time for compromise when we are on the threshold of a transformation in our society, and you could be the one to lead it, not to betray it in compromise. You don't need to be afraid. We are your lieutenants (unless you betray too many of us, my gay friends and family members on the top of that list).

We've got your back.

I've got to say, while I am on the subject again, Barack, that I don't agree with Frank Schaeffer when he says that you were right to invite to have Rick Warren to pray at your inauguration. I could start with saying that there is no place for public prayer in government, but tokenism is always wrong. That's like saying, "You were right, Mr. President, for nominating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the bench. A little tokenism can't hurt. Might mollify the colored people." You fell there. You never promised equality to gays, but you didn't have to put a man up in front of the nation at the moment of your investiture, and have him pray for their damned, craven souls.

You might have been right in a highly qualified sense to indulge in a little tokenism praying, but led by a person who publicly condemns none.

I want to know, from those who are its members but do not consider themselves at ease with either of these factions of the Republican party, who are cast adrift whether you care, how you identify yourselves right now, what it means to you and what you want. I'd be furious if it were my party, and I don't know if it would be enough for me to content myself with voting with the Democrats and calling myself an Independent.

Are we heading to a real three party system, with the Independents picking up the phlogiston of the Republican conflagration?

Are we going to see the extremes in the Republican party lose their hold in the subsequent congressional and senate election cycles with a host of Independents who feel themselves to be Republicans of a pre-Nixon era taking back their party?

Or, are we going to see a continued rise in the Democratic party as it expresses it principles and aims for the nation in this time?

I think there are a couple tiny mistakes in the first couple paragraphs, but you get the idea...

Frank Schaeffer

Posted February 11, 2009 | 05:17 PM (EST)

An Open Letter to President Obama About the Republicans (From a Former Republican)

Dear President Obama: I know that from time to time you read Huffington Post because you've written for it. As a Huffington Post reader you'll know that no one on this web site has more faithfully supported your candidacy and now your presidency than me. As a former lifelong Republican, son of a co-founder of the Religious Right; my late evangelical leader father, Francis Schaeffer, I'm in a unique position to tell you a few things about the Republicans from inside perspective. (As you know I left that movement in the mid 1980s.)

*The lack of cooperation you're getting from the Republican Party will continue. You were right to indulge in a little bit of tokenism when you had to Pastor Rick Warren pray at your inauguration. But if you think that the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are going to do more than their utmost to obstruct everything you are and what you stand for you're dreaming.

As someone who appeared numerous times on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, as someone for whom Jerry Falwell used to send his private jet to bring me to speak at his college, as an author who had James Dobson giveaway 150,000 copies of my one of my fundamentalist "books" allow me to explain something: the Republican Party is controlled by two ideological groups. First, is the Religious Right. Second, are the neoconservatives. Both groups share one thing in common: they are driven by fear and paranoia. Between them there is no Republican "center" for you to appeal to, just two versions of hate-filled extremes.

The Religious Right supply the kind of people who at McCain and Palin rallies were yelling things such as "kill him" about you. That's the constituency to which your hand was extended when looking for compromise on your financial bailout bill.

There's only one thing that makes sense for you now. Mr. President, you need to forget a bipartisan approach and get on with the business of governing by winning each battle. You will never be able to work with the Republicans because they hate you. Believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the norm not the exception. James Dobson and the rest are praying for you to fail. The neoconservatives are gnashing their teeth and waiting for you to "sell out Israel" or "show weakness" in Afghanistan, whatever, so they can declare you a traitor.

The problem is that when you deal with the Republican Party you're talking to the polished characters in Washington. I wish you could see the hate e-mail's that I have received over the last two years because I supported you, letters calling for God to kill me, telling me that I hate God because I supported you and that I am "an abortionist" and worse a "fag lover" because I've written that I believe that you will be a great president.

What those senators and congressmen are telling you is not what their rabid core constituents are telling them. Their loyalty is to a fundamentalist Christian ideology on the one hand and American exceptionalism of perpetual warfare and hatred and fear of the "other" on the other hand. Between the neoconservatives and evangelical Religious Right Republicans you have no friends.

The good news is that most Americans support you. And if you will just get in the face of the Republican Party and call their bluff you'll be surprised how many individual ordinary Republicans will support you, not to mention the rest of us. America is sick of the Republicans.

The Democratic Party won for a reason: the Republicans failed and have taken us all down with them! You're doing your presidency and America no favor by extending an open hand to the perpetually knotted fist of what has become the embittered lunatic fringe of our country. They would rather go down in flames than "compromise" their ideology.

As you showed us again at your press conference of Feb 9, you are a brilliant, articulate and decent man. Your Republican opponents are not decent people but ideologues bent on destroying you. To quote the biblical adage sir, don't cast your pearls before swine.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back. Now in paperback.

*Ed. Note: Not to put too fine a point on Mr. Schaeffer's propos -- http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30623

....

And I really like this notion. I really, really do --

Taking Stock in America, or the American Stockholder

America’s horror of “nationalization” could be defused by handing out shares to all American households. President Bush used to talk about building an “ownership society.” Well, giving shares in big banks to all American households would be a terrific way to do that.

I just have to include this from Kristof today, too. Thank you, Sir:

Yes, troubled banks might lose good people to hedge funds that can pay more because they’re not bound by these curbs. But that upsets me less than the idea of single mothers working multiple jobs so that their tax dollars can underwrite million-dollar bonuses at companies getting taxpayer assistance.

But, keep those single mothers out of those hedge funds, for everyone's sake.

So, why not look to Sweden for their bank bail-out model, and to France for national health care?

Why not, America? We weren't exactly screaming, "But that's not American, it's French!" when we were borrowing their philosophical principles for our constitution and relying on their military and financial support to get the job done.

Why not, indeed.

....

once in a lifetime

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

....

All things great and good

I'm going out to work in the garden and do some thinking. I got lucky this time. I already didn't have a job, and my husband has one he can't lose.

I remember, though.

....

Unemployment benefits

yeah.

I remember losing my job at KPF in June 1990 and finding out that I was pregnant for Sam the following February, while I was still temping for some company on the Upper West Side in a brownstone with a woman named Nancy and an administrative assistant who snapped her gum, wore leopard prints anywhere cloth can be applied to a human body and the brightest pink lipstick, and did a decent job. Above all, she was a really sweet person.

Nancy and I thought that we were doing her a big favor by taking her aside and explaining that to get ahead in the workplace, it is preferable not to dress or make herself us like she did, and to drop the gum. Being an especially generous and courageous person, I took this upon myself. She looked happily expectant as I sat down with her, and the change in the look on her face when I got just a little bit into my ill-prepared and worse-placed explanation of how to dress to succeed, as she realized what I was trying to say, shamed me. I realized how incredibly stupid and unintentionally mean I was. I'll never forget.

So, did I stop and just apologize? No, of course not. I couldn't think a way fast enough out of the predicament. I tried to look even more well-intentioned and plowed along. The building alarm didn't suddenly start ringing, I didn't suffer a sudden sneezing fit, the phone didn't ring, announcing an emergency requiring my immediate attention. I don't even remember what I did in that company or what the company did, only that the owners were a Barnard grad from a class well before mine and her British husband by the name of Robyn, so there couldn't possibly have been anything important enough to spare either of us my exceedingly embarrassing explanation of how white people dress and how she should, too, to do herself justice in the workplace. It was indecent. I just gagged through long enough to justify my having started it in the first place.

Nancy observed my failure from a distance.

"So, how'd it go? How'd she take it? Do you think it will help?" she asked when I returned to my work at her side.

"Oh, sure. Certainly. She took it really well."

I needed to be hit by a taxi and receive whatever that wonderful thing is that they give you to relax you before surgery.

I signed up for a temporary agency and answered phones with aplomb. How many stupid things can you say when you can't possibly feel responsible for anything weighter than making your employers' proud of the way you handled their clients on the phone? I froze under a series of air conditioning ducts from midtown to Jersey City, until I ended up rescuing a graphic design firm from 180-day arrears under Sam's supervision as he grew from a bump under my dress to a good size baby in the portacrib next to my desk, until the day I thought I was fired by my fashionable and well-regarded employer, a single mother in Manhattan herself, who resented deeply my unwillingness to move back to the city from Fairfield County, and swore at the moving guys like the worst among them, who, in turn, looked to us to see if we were as shocked by our boss' behavior as they were. Oh yeah, we were.

Only, see, she claimed I wasn't fired. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, anything to get away from this wonderful woman who could turn into Cruella DeVille in a 180° pirouette on the polished floorboards of our Flatiron district building, but, next thing I knew, I was confessing to my alcoholic hairdresser landlord, who wished I would invite him to remove his bathrobe when he invited himself into my studio apartment over his home and bedroom and sat down on the end of my bed, while I tried to look like this was perfectly normal (I learned to compartmentalize as well as Bill Clinton), that I had lost my job, was ineligible for unemployment because my employer fought me all the way to the unemployment court and won, and wouldn't be able to continue to pay my rent.

"Listen, apply for AFDC," he said with real kindness and sympathy. "There's no shame in taking help when you need it." I wasn't evicted. I could go on walking through his front door, up the stairs past his bedroom to my studio under the eaves, until he eventually built an outside staircase to a door he installed on the landing of the attic steps, safely behind the door to his second floor hall that I tried to never use again and keep locked at all times.

I had to go through the alphabet before I could come up with what AFDC meant, but I understood: welfare. I nodded my assent there by that columned porch with painted wicker furniture behind the Old Greenwich white picket fence, where my landlord demonstrated that my former employer wasn't the only contradiction in terms, and people are just that complex.

The ladies at the AFDC office in Stamford -- or was it Norwalk? -- were every bit as nice as the ones I met when the employer who had originally had to lay me off at the very beginning of the downturn told me that my COBRA didn't cover prenatal care (it turned out they were wrong, and I eventually gave birth at NYU Medical Center), and I ended up at the public clinic at St. Vincent's Hospital, being told by a kind black woman that there was no shame in applying for the WIC benefits to which my situation entitled me all those months of answering one company's phones after another with two Ivy League diplomas. Having my groceries examined at the check-out at the Washington Square Village neighborhood grocery stores for compliance with the terms of the WIC benefits prepared me for pulling out my Food Stamps at Poricelli's Food Market, next to the women whose husbands' year-end bonuses and investment portfolios entitled them to membership at the local country, yacht and beach clubs, while I learned to smile in the face of their pity.

This was most definitely not how my upbringing and Barnard had taught me that the world was supposed to work.

When I needed a break from needing every ounce of my own pride, I went to the A&P on the Post Road and to join anyone else who might be needing to pay for their kids' dinner with those brown and beige slips.

My break came in the form of a backroom job with a hedgefund company on the Stamford Marina. Really kind neighbors who wished better for Sam and me helped me get the interview. I was hired, I later realized, so that the owner could make sport of me, his favorite prey: a "lesbian, liberal, animal-loving Democrat."

He got two out of three right, he also came that close to going to jail the day he nearly burst a vessel in his pulsing crimson brow, having the worst temper tantrum I had witnessed to that fateful moment, when he deemed it necessary to throw me out of the office because my "superior" was on vacation, there was a snag in the programming to which I was not given access to the code, and the margin was all calculated at double the real numbers owed. I had figured that out before he did, and I was already busy recalculating it all by hand to call the right numbers into the backroom at his buddies' bank, Bear Stearns, when he came surging into my tiny room, screaming. Silence in the trading room behind us. I knew they were with me, like they knew we were with them when it was one of their turns. Cowards.

The police informed him, when he refused to provide the written proof that he had fired me at their instruction -- see? I learned quickly -- after he called them to have me removed without it, while I waited patiently in the reception area, as I informed him that I would until I had it in hand, that they would only be too happy to take him "in". I just had to peek at his shame then. It was so gratifying to see him with his back to the wall.

"Did you fire this woman as she states?" He was nearly inarticulate now at the height of the passion of his rage.

"Yes!"

"Have you given her written notice of her firing?"

"I will do no such thing," he screamed.

"Sir, the law states that you owe her written notice. We are not leaving here until she has it."

"I don't have any paper to write it on," he smirked, sure he had them, or that he had at least proved that he was the biggest asshole in the room.

The officer looked around the office, and let his eyes stop pointedly on the receptionist's desk before returning to rest on Jon's purple brow, pulsing regularly and determinedly, proof of his greater danger. Smirking helped him bring his blood pressure back down. I thought about his blond wife and kids, and wondered how embarrassed she felt to be married to him for membership to whatever Darien Club had admitted them for his money, since he wasn't the right religion. Then I watched him realize he wasn't going to be able to wisecrack or bully his way out of it.

"Sir, we'd be only too happy to take you in." None of the guys had come to watch. They sat glued to their places, listening to every word, witnessing the one humiliation they couldn't cover for him with their own denial from the safety of their desks and the work they pretended to be doing still, especially the managing director, who was an acquaintance of the friends who had approached him about getting me the interview. What, I wondered, was going through his mind?

Jon, always the master of disdain and a loaded gesture, swore and grabbed a scrap of paper from the recycling bin he mocked me for maintaining, sitting just inside the supply room and kitchen, scribbled a note on it while the officer watched, making sure he wrote what was required.

"You may go to your car now," his partner informed me, turning to nod a little solidarity with me and let me get out of there. "Wait there for us."

When they walked through the doors a few minutes later, and saw me standing there, shivering next to my little white Honda Civic, wondering what I was going to do next and how it was that such a man could have everything I needed and parade that in front of me for months, behave that way and not be smote instantly, while I tried to make it look like it was just fine for a mother to raise her baby in an attic studio apartment and wear the cast-offs of a woman over on the other side of town years younger than I was, who was herself made to feel that she didn't belong because she was terribly young, the South American bride of a wealthy South American man, taken for the children's well-dressed, polite and quiet nanny, while he mocked me for paying the taxes on my income insufficient to live on, much less shelter in the Bahamas.

That is why nothing happening today surprises me in the least.

And it only gets better.
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today's papers

Geithner Bombs Coming-Out Party

By Daniel Politi
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, at 6:51 AM ET
The much-anticipated announcement turned out to be a big letdown. The New York Times highlights that the administration's plan to rescue the nation's financial system that was unveiled by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "is far bigger than anyone predicted and envisions a far greater government role in markets and banks than at any time since the 1930s." The administration said it's committed to spending as much as $2.5 trillion in the effort. But Wall Street quickly gave the plan "a resounding thumbs down," as USA Today puts it, because it was short on some very key details that made clear the plan is very much a work in progress. The Wall Street Journal points out that the markets experienced the worst sell-off since President Obama moved into the White House as stocks plunged nearly 5 percent sending the market "to its lowest level since Nov. 20."
Investors weren't alone in their unhappiness with the plan. Lawmakers were also quick to criticize Geithner for failing to provide more details on how the administration plans to deal with the ongoing mess. "What they did is over-promise and under-deliver," the head of a private investment firm tells the Washington Post. "They said there was going to be a plan, so everybody expected a plan. And there was nothing." The Los Angeles Times says that the lack of details in the announcement "reflects a double bind for the Obama administration." It's become clear that the problems in the financial system are bigger than expected and could require more money to fix, but at the same time Congress has grown even angrier at Wall Street, which makes it highly unlikely that lawmakers would approve more funding for the effort.
To continue reading, click here.
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Why Republicans Won't Support the Stimulus

Monday 09 February 2009

by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) (Center), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Sen. Roger Wicker (R- Mississippi), and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) hold a press conference on the stimulus package. (Photo: Getty Images)

Why are Senate Republicans (all, that is, except the lonely moderates Collins, Snowe, and Specter) nixing the stimulus package, as House Republicans did? Not because Obama failed to compromise - he gave them the tax breaks they wanted, included a whopper for business. Not because Senate Democrats failed to bend - they agreed to trim more than $100 billion out of a previous version of the bill. Not because Senate Republicans are doctrinally opposed to deficit spending - many of them happily voted for Bush spending and tax cuts that doubled the federal debt.
The reason has to do with the timing of the economic recovery. If everything goes as well as possible and the stimulus and next round of bank bailouts work perfectly, a turnaround could begin as early as mid-2010. But even under this rosy scenario, employers wouldn't start rehiring until late 2010 because they'll want to be sure the upturn is for real (employment typically lags in a recovery). This means that under the best of circumstances - assuming the stimulus is big enough to jump-start the economy and the next bank bailout big enough to get credit moving - most Americans won't feel much better than they do now by November, 2010. Unemployment could easily be hovering close to 8 percent; underemployment, close to 14 percent; and many other indicators, still in the doldrums.
That's if all goes extremely well. But what if the stimulus isn't big enough? (I fear it won't be, given the large and growing gap between what the economy can produce at near full-employment and the meager demand coming from consumers and businesses.) And what if the bailout doesn't quite work? (It may not, given that the banking system is collapsing and many banks are actually insolvent.) The economy in November of 2010 may be worse than it is now, with no turnaround in sight.
Which brings us to the midterm elections of 2010.
Yesterday, while sitting across from Newt Gingrich on George Stephanopoulos's Sunday morning television show, 1994 came roaring back into my head. Gingrich, you remember, turned that midterm election into a national referendum about Bill Clinton's leadership. (No one today remembers what was in Gingrich's "Contract with America," but almost no one did then, either.) Because Clinton's presidency had had a rough start and because House and Senate Republicans had kept remarkable unity in opposing him at almost every turn, Gingrich in the election of 1994 could claim that and the Republican Party offered a clear alternative, and had earned the chance to control Congress.
Fast forward to today and listen to Senate Republicans referring to the stimulus: "This is neither bipartisan nor is it a compromise," said Sen. John McCain this morning. "It is ... generational theft" that will increase the role of government and provide no mechanism for paying back the money. Sen. Mike Enzi said the package "spends everything we've got on nothing we're sure about. I'm supposed to be giddy that we're only spending $827 billion. Frankly, I've had enough of this bailout baloney." Sen. Tom Coburn's office released a list of projects that he calls earmarks and pork, totalling more than $55 billion. And so it went today.
Last week, House Republicans were equally vitriolic.
And wait until they hear about the next stage of the bank bailout. I'd be surprised if more than a handful of House or Senate Republicans support it.
Republicans don't want their fingerprints on the stimulus bill or the next bank bailout because they plan to make the midterm election of 2010 a national referendum on Barack Obama's handling of the economy. They know that by then the economy will still appear sufficiently weak that they can dub the entire Obama effort a failure - even if the economy would have been far worse without it, even if the economy is beginning to turn around. They'll say "he wanted more government spending, and we said no, but we didn't have the votes. Elect us and we'll turn the economy around by cutting taxes and getting government out of the private sector."
Obama believes Republicans will eventually embrace bipartisanship. I hope he's right but I fear he's wrong. They want to take back Congress the way Newt Gingrich retook the House (and helped Republicans retake the Senate) in 1994 - with hellfire and brimstone. Once in control of Congress, they'll be able to block Obama's big initiatives on health care and the environment, stop any Supreme Court nominees, and set up their own candidate for the White House in 2012.
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Which is why someone else -- *now who was it? -- was also saying today that this moment looks an awful lot like the beginning of the Clinton years and the rise of Gingrich and his loudmouthpiece and "honorary member" of the house of representatives, Rush Limbaugh, and their Republican Revolution Contract for America, or whatever it was called.

You've got to love these guys for sticking to their principles.

To hell with it. I am going to (finally) prune my lavender plants in the February afternoon sun before it disappears in the creeping, enveloping miasma of Republican pettiness and smallness of mind emanating from the United States along with economic ruin, and hope Serena wins her match without me.

* Found it...

During a closed-door speech at the House Republican retreat last month, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that "with George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay out of the picture," voters would embrace Republicans again. One lawmaker in the room later called Gingrich's singling out of other Republicans "gratuitous." Gingrich's office refused to "confirm or deny the comments attributed to the ex-Speaker."

From a Center for Progressive Policy email yesterday.

Speaking of Serena...

....

Newsflash!

Serena Williams just bought an
apartment in Paris in the 6th!

I love Serena Williams. Venus, too.

She just had the stupidest interview I have ever seen given. Speculation that she has grandes ambitions près de la Porte d'Auteuil ce mois de juin.

Allez le numéro 1!

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Charming désespoir

Carelessness, without care

empty packs of Marlboros
floating in the can
collecting rainwater
under the roof gutter

Walking to the garage in the half-frozen rain falling rather despondently from the gray sky onto the soaked brown landscape of our garden and what lies beyond it, a sorry view today, to get a roll of paper towel to clean up the drippings of the garbage bag that only I can see when I take a dust thing of dog hair and sand, the mountainous recolte of my administrations with the broom -- as every time, more than once a day --, to the garbage, my eye spies again the empty packs of Marlboro cigarettes, discarded and trampled into what was a lawn, bare now, again, of grass and sporting clumps of moss, both growing there and fallen from the roof of the petit maison.

Entering the house, I see the guts of a mouse, all that's left of a new kill by one of the cats, between the doormat and the door.

I am utterly deflated. I can go to Paris and chat with my friends over a bowl of potage and an entrecôte, saignant, a glass of wine in a bistro where even the house wine in a pichet is good, but even with these friends I met through our mutual enthusiastic support of Barack Obama and the Change to come, there is more of the bitterness of which we are not supposed to allow ourselves the taste, chastised for losing site of the Great forest for the trees. But, I am seated across the bistro table from one such tree, and he asks, with a sense of having been deceived or betrayed, "What happened to the Separation of church and state? Would Lyndon Johnson have asked a segregationist to say the benediction? He casts us onto the heap."

What are we supposed to say to console what can't and shouldn't be consoled? There now, hush, one liberation, one vindication at a time, my friend, one redemption for themselves at a time, because that is all the American people, any People can support. Yours will come.

Why wonder that France is his chosen home when their next president could be Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of this city, himself a publicly gay man and and free to enjoy full privileges in his society, with the exception of marriage in this historically Catholic country, not quite ready to let the last remnant of a faith they have otherwise largely, although not wholly, not all of them, for there remain a number who practice with as great a faith as always, discarded. If he cannot marry, he can become a legal partner, declared in his own mairie, and receive all the same benefits of a legally married couple.


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Invalidate Prop 8

sign the petition before February 14, Valentine's Day

I have, as anyone who has read this journal since its inception, or knew me before, knows, worked so hard on that lawn, trying to make grass not only sprout and grow, but thrive. I have worked hours that can't be counted without admitting to a reasonable plea of unreasonableness excused only by insanity, or deliberately unacknowledged desperation. Then, the workers come, smoke their cigarettes and leave their empty packages behind, along with their unstowed and unprotected tools and dribbled sand, bits of masonry and chaux, scattered everywhere, what's left of the grass and weeds, smashed flat under their -- and our -- feet into the ground that can't now possibly give life to yet another lawn this spring, and I wonder who enjoys control over what?

Careless. Without care.

Mary asked, forwarding the Paul Krugman OpEd of yesterday's post, "Who is in charge in DC?" There was so much anger and accusation in those six words, "Recall or fire them all," "repugs and media are trying to stir controversy on the hill... as though the economy alone isn't enough... why is this not being taken seriously? My god, this is our economic future, jobs retirements, everything..." The sentence leaving you to call the everything to mind for yourself. Your everything.

And why aren't they taking this seriously?

I do not even need to struggle to find the words, since I just found them this morning and marked them in my book with an unopened envelope containing a recent statement of my investment accounts, worth something as a marker of the True sentiments that mark their cause, the author of which is Octavian Nothing, soldier in Lord Dunmore's Royal Ethiopian Regiment, "Liberty to Slaves" embroidered onto the shirt of his Loyalist uniform:

"It is in fact easily discernible that governments are instituted to commit the crimes that their citizens require for gain, but cannot countenance committing privately."

I intervened in this piece of charming youthful désespoir, countering that some philosophers say governments were instituted to protect the natural rights of the citizen; to which Octavian said that nature recognizes no rights. "Our rights are unnatural, or we should need no government to defend them." I protested; he insisted. "Look abroad in the fields," he said. "What may kill, kills, what may eat, eats. All things are born unequal, and there is no law but that inequality."

I did not disagree, but I was uneasy at the savagery in his address. "You would say yourself," I reminded him, "'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'"

"And you would say yourself," he replied, "'The world is the house of the strong.'" Thus ended our protreptic discourse.

-- The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Volume II, The Kingdom on the Waves, M.T. Anderson

Who are the strong, upon what do they depend, and what does it take to make them recognize Justice? They will only change place with others, once brought low. And we will continue to fight amongst ourselves, making some True friends, brothers and sisters along the way.
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Ladies and gentlemen who lunch

Heading out today

Lunch today at the Café des Musées on the rue Turenne and the rue du Parc Royal in the Marais with my two favorite fellow progressive Democrats in Paris. My ladies-who-lunch jacket is leather with a fake fur detachable collar, à la my motorcycle leather (No, that's not I. I only wish.). Taking my bike, like I did last night for the Barnard book club meeting in the 16th. Happiness. For once, it wasn't below freezing. The sun is even shining today for the ride. See? God favors Democrats.

OK.

I know.

This is the age of bi-partisanship, letting those Democrats and those Republicans capable of reasoning with themselves and one another work together to do our nation's business. I was listening to Obama during the campaign, I really was, even as I was impatient that we weren't necessarily going to get the programs I want, like single-payer health care.

The truth is that if we do get them, we'll get them because we did it right. We made the case on its merits and won conservative support for a progressive ideal that provides economic benefit and social justice. We'll have avoided the Clintonland of partisan hatred and Rovian politics-as-usual. As my friend Q points out to me, Democrats clinging to single-issues and their pet programs and ideas can be as despicable and harmful as Rove over on the other end of the political spectrum. Such a bitter taste in the mouth to say that, but true.

The alternative is to risk growing another Gingrich in the hot-house of congress.

Yes, Barack, I was listening, even when I wasn't perfectly happy to hear what I was hearing. I pretty much get it. Really.

Anyway, hacks and wonks or not up there on the heights, I do prefer the idea that the president sets the agenda from the executive and the representatives work it out in the legislative. Everyone is happier when he or she gets to do their job and get some credit for it. We behave better then, too.

So, time to take the doggers for a 15 minute walk and then get ready to leave. I don't want to be late for this lunch, no way.

Ciao!

PS: A second perfect day for the workers, so you can be sure they won't be here again today. End of February. I laugh.

Bitterly.

I leave you with Barack -- "I urge all of us not to make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary" -- and Keith Olbermann...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ah, Keith, that we didn't need you, but since we do (we do!), glad you're there.
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