Blog #101             

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.  I have three daughters (plus a wife), so Valentine’s Day was always a busy time for me when my girls were young.  Even when they were all grown up and gone from home, I would send them boxes of cheap, chocolatey junk for V. Day.  In 1998, Carol the Killjoy told me that the girls didn’t want that junk anymore; they hated it.  So that year I didn’t send any candy.  On Feb. 15^th of that year, I received three phone calls.  “You are a horrible excuse for a father and don’t ever call me your daughter again.”  I immediately composed a letter of apology bemoaning my failure as a parent and sent a copy to each child – along with an extra-large box of over-priced and high-calorie garbage.  They loved the candy – and the letter, so the next week I wrote them another and have been sending them a weekly letter for 21 years.  Each letter (1,092 of them by now) contains family news, some funny stuff, a large dollop of love and a limerick. 

Two years ago, Carol said I should expand and let my friends share all the clever stuff I write in those letters and so I started this blog.  There, that’s the story!  I’m glad you’re along for the ride.  But you’re not getting any chocolate.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling wonderful.  On the radio this morning, they said, “The temperature is 33, feels like 27.”  I called up the weather service and asked them what 27 felt like.  They said 22.

Michael and Carol are travelling again.  Sounds like the title of a Brady Bunch episode, doesn’t it?  But wherever we may roam, to Paris or to Nome, South Africa or Rome, however far from home, across the ocean’s foam, we’ll travel with a comb, and buy a plastic gnome, with booties made of chrome, and read a classic tome, and write a silly poem.  Sorry, got carried away.  I know you often think there is method to my madness, but sometimes, in truth, there is just madness. 

Yes, we jumped in the car and drove to North Carolina on our annual Mooch Tour, three glorious weeks of mooching on relatives and friends in North Carolina and Florida, where the weather is fine, there are no hotel bills and the company is excellent. (I have to say nice things about them if I want to be invited back next year.)  I’ll be telling you all about it over the next few weeks.

Did you notice up above that I spelled travelling with two ells?  I read so many books by British authors that I often lapse into their ways of spelling.  Did you know that in America gray is a color, whereas in England grey is a colour?

One thing you do know, I’m sure, is that everybody’s running for President?  It’s only 21 months until the election, so get ready.  Voting is a surreal event in this country.  I mean this is a place where you can wave your phone across a scanner to pay for your groceries, where your cell phone shows you who’s ringing your doorbell even if you’re not at home, where you can punch Google and find out anything from how to make a thermo-nuclear device to what costume the Governor of Virginia wore in medical school.

But voting, which is a pretty important exercise, is still in the 19^th century.  All the poll workers are definitely from the 19^th century.  You get in a line and show your ID to a 98-year-old woman who has cataracts.  She gives you a piece of scratch paper and you move to another line where you get a paper ballot and a black marker.  Scraps of paper, magic markers?  Pretty primitive if you ask me.  Nine-year-olds can play Fortnite with three other friends in three other states without any effort except from their thumbs, while their parents and grandparents are voting by filling in the blanks with a marker and following the instructions of a gaggle of nonagenarians.  There has to be a better way.

And look at some of the clowns we wind up electing.  Here’s one example.  A Hawaiian lawmaker has proposed a law to eliminate cigarette smoking in his state by raising the minimum age.  By the year 2024, his law proposes, the minimum age for buying cigarettes will be 100.  I could not make up something that galactically stupid.

And already, the same people who promised to leave the country if Trump was elected back in 2016 are making those vows once again.  George Clooney, Ashley Judd, Robert De Niro.  Even Barbra Streisand, whom the Democrats call Babs and the Republicans call B.S.  They’ve all threatened to leave.

                                     

If we don’t kick Trump off the track

I’m leaving and not coming back

One more day of Trump

And I’m moving my rump

To someplace that’s safe – like Iraq.

A Democracy is a wrestling match of ideas, not a pick-up game where if you don’t get to bat first you take your ball and go home.  And speaking of Presidents, next Monday we celebrate Presidents’ Day, which of course commemorates the day in 1778 when George Washington sold his first sofa and lounge chair to James Madison. Free delivery and no payments until 1780. 

Next Tuesday is the day after Presidents’ Day, which is significant in its own way.  On this day in 1778, the first return in American history occurred when James Madison brought back the sofa and lounge chair to George because they were damaged in delivery.  Madison had no trouble transporting the furniture.  He used his Dolly.

My North Carolina daughter, my sweet Jennifer, is a serious and thoughtful eater.  For dinner she made the rest of the family a lovely dinner, chicken and pasta, which we all loved but which she regarded as unhealthy.  She made for herself a kale pizza on seaweed crust. Seriously!  It looks just like it sounds.  She used an old Greek recipe that Socrates’ wife made for him one night.  Socrates looked at it and said, “That’s ok, Honey.  I’ll just have the hemlock.”

Don’t you try the hemlock, not unless I bore you again next week. Till then, stay well, count your blessings and enjoy your Valentine’s Day.  I’ll be back in a week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com