Unemployment, area24radio.com, Mark and Anne

It's been awhile but some good things have happened.

Our friends, Mark and Anne, had their annual party and we had a blast. It was a New Orleans theme and I had my first piece of alligator. Yes, it tastes like chicken!

Ended up the evening talking about art, movies, especially The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. Everyone has just got to see it - everyone, with a brain, that is. And of course, talking about our favorite show, Mad Men, which won the Emmy again, for the third year in a row but the Emmy bigwigs don't seem to understand that the actors are suberb also. At least, they finally gave it to Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer.

Love you Anne and Mark.

I launched my show on area24radio.com called Power and Glory after the Phil Ochs song.

For my readers, my first show was in memory of the great Russian Poet, Andrei Voznesensky with poet, Kenneth Pearson and my second show was on the Iroquois Confederacy with great music provided by Joanne Shenandoah, Grammy Award Winner, and her family and Robbie Robertson and many great Native American Artists. It was really fun.

Since then I have been pounding the pavements. My first interview was a dud while the second was okay. Today, I returned from my third and I'm a bit hopeful. We'll see what happens.

Not one thing I voted for in the last presidential election has come to fruition. Gitmo is still open. The Iraq War, although we're making a show of pulling out, has left the country in a mess and let's not even discuss Afghanistan where more Americans were killed today.

We happened to be in Italy, two years ago. We went for two reasons: one was to show that I had recovered from my mastectomy and the other was that my husband could find his relatives in the Dolomites. Cool on both!

We were at my cousins in Genova when Lehman crashed and my cousins are both reporters and Luigino is the editor of a newspaper. They both turned and said, "Your next president is Obama". In fact, the night he won, after that fabulous speech in Chicago, they called me on the phone and we were all so happy. It was 3:30 AM and we were all so happy.

That was then and this is now. It seems his first priority was the banks and I guess it still is. He has surrounded himself, with the exception of Hillary Clinton, with the worst advisors I can recall, some of them, holdouts from Bush 2, the worst administration in my lifetime.

And so, not only me, but millions are pounding the pavements. And going to Unemployment for help is like going nowhere. They gave me a password to go onto their job site and there were job listings from 2008 and 2009. There's my tax dollars at work.

Perhaps, someone should tell the President. I'm still waiting to see how that health plan is going to benefit my husband and me. Where is it?

So, we decided to do something this weekend to forget everything and we saw Avatar, the extended one, at the IMAX in 3D. It was astonishing and that's how it should have been presented from the inception.

As for last night, I turned off the Emmys when I did not get to see Betty White give her acceptance speech. Got sick of Jimmy Fallon, too. Sorry, Jimmy.

I am in a strange head, a bit of a strange head because I cannot ever remember the United States in such a mess. I know that it's not all Obama's fault. Don't you love the Tea Party Claque, backed by oil money, which is really concerned about them. They want to take their government back. From Whom?

The Republicans are blubbering about the deficit. Well, it's their deficit and their boy, Bush 2 and the real president, Cheney in his bunker, who by the way said "that deficits are unimportant" started this money mess. Clinton handed them a surplus.

So my one question to the tea baggers is "Where were you during the Cheney-Bush Administration?"

I now avoid the corporate news and get my info from Jon Stewart, who also won another Emmy, and Stephen Colbert, who also deserved one and MSNBC. I read the intelligent conservative commentators, of which there are so few, and see such a great divide and feel the country wallowing in hatred, self-hatred, although the self-hatred is being directed at others. We're back to the old cliche of who's really an American.

That's easy: the Native Americans.

The rest of us are all immigrants and the children of immigrants. We are the hyphenated ones.

My show this week is going to be a lot of music that you may have never heard and some anecdotes. So tune in!

Let's stick together and fight the hate that is now calling itself the Republican Party. As for the Democrats, who the hell are you?

I should have voted for Hillary.

We, once again, are living in the age of Thomas Paine, "These are the times that try men's souls". Women, too, Mr. Paine and most of all, children.

As Phil Ochs sang about our country, "Oh, her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom, glory shall rest on us all, on us all".

Let's hope!

Ciao for now!

Tabbie

It is one year since the death of our cat, Tabbie. It hurts as much now as it did then.

We still love you, Tabbie.

From the moment I first saw you, in the closet, in the cardboard box, being ridiculed as stupid, I saw a poor creature that no one wanted.

And when Lou adopted Patch, Mary T. sent you home with him insisting that my mother said that Lou needed two cats for company. My mother, of course, said no such thing.

There we all were with you, a little runt, who cowered with every glance and every caress.

We didn’t have a name for you and so we called you Tabbie.

TabbieRoo - Tabber

Beanie - Beanbag

Eeny of the Beanies - and Tabberini.

You weren’t stupid. You were King of the Yard and won many battles, bringing home much booty. No one had street smarts like you. Often victorious, you always knew where home was and although the street rang with “Tabbie come home”, you would put up a fuss and answer back but you always returned.

You were quite a talker, getting us up every morning to do your bidding. With you around, there was no real need for an alarm clock.

You loved thunderstorms and always sat in the window to catch each bit of action, thunder peals, lightning bolts and raindrops.

You loved your towels and Lou’s shoes and my purses.

You really never asked for anything but we saw the suffering in your eyes. We saw it every time you climbed to the window and looked out at a world that you could no longer have.

So Goodbye, Tabbie.

Be King again. Reign over a kingdom, filled with the best thunderstorms.

May you find the best bush for shelter and observation.

We wish that now you need never cower again and be frightened by every glance and every caress and we send you all the kisses and caresses that we tried to give you, here, on this earth.

But most of all, we wish you peace, little friend, best buddy and all around cool cat.

Vaya con Dios, Tabbie and may the first person you meet be St. Francis of Assisi and you will never fear anything, anymore.