Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Hanukkah, 2017

Love you so much and so sweet of you to to send me the billfold, it is just what I wanted, only you would know ... pictures to follow,  boys were here, Little Genie is spending the night, Doug Jones won In Alabama ... superb

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Carole Barrel Sortie Two


HI Carole,

Two days ago we were gleefully hunting for and finding  doggie ornaments together in our favorite Ross store nearby, and today I awoke in tears, searching my cell phone for you, your name.

A contact with the first letters of CA came up, not uncommon, and in my dream and I called it explaining I was looking for my sister whom I had not seen.

A woman's voice came from behind what looked like a library check out counter, a large window or glass door behind it, and after thinking, recalling she said, "Oh, I  remember her, your sister with your mother."

And I gulped: But my my mother is dead.

Necause she, you, too ...

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Carole Barrel Sortie One


Hiya Miss Carole Barrel,

I'd forgotten that silly name for you .... either you intend to stretch my time,  or our manuscript will remain undone ... received a new Mac from Apple but the time machine backup HD failed.

Luckily, also made a CD copy of what was on the desktop before returning the other. Am writing this in way older workhorse 2009 computer ... won't know what is missing until I need it.

Had mounds of files saved in text edit, mostly research to build place: time/history; they are gone.

So hoping recent rewrites were saved.  Haven't quite looked because also needed to update Word to work with OS 13. 10. 1  ...  it looks different and am waiting for new HD to arrive before resuming.

Images blicked away too, into the ether.  Had a very few on my phone, technology after your time here.  Same with cloud storage, or not.

Relating to, yesterday went to our favorite Ross specifically wanting doggie ornaments for holiday mantle.  Had a few nebbishy things in basket, but no doggies.  Then, after three loops around the same section, there they were ... right on top where they had not been.

In plain sight.

Doggies was all it took.

Gaiety and mirth.

They, you and I came home. Thanks, schwestie.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Chocolate Truffles 2017

Hello my love,

A fresh box of Russel Stover's for you ... on the mantle under the picture of you at nineteen years old, at college, you'd said, snapped by a former beau, Bob Someone. I was giggly driving home from Publix with it, they only had a few, my yearly to you, the least I could do, our laughter and glee as we chomped and gulped.

November 17, 2017

The next day.

Truffles for you on the fireplace mantel. Assorted for me: raspberry cream.

Our lips are not smacking together in revere.

Who'd ever have perceived the loneliness of chocolates? The old thumbprints and their wane?

***

Remind Josh:

Ø

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Guinea Pig Install


Well, Carole, you must want me to live a very long time because another delay— a clean computer install on my MAC as I write ; the tech at Apple Store is doing... and I just hope all our backups are good.

Will take Curt the weekend to put stuff back, hope it is there to retrieve.

Have a hard copy of  the last revision, is incomplete, was searching through older files, pulling copying and pasting ..... oh Carole!

Have had more problems with Apple than they'd ever own up to .... am writing this from older 2009 machine before complications of the cloud  with its humongous storage, and nebulous blameful third party providers — the technology evolving and idiots like me paying the company's learning curve... we the guinea pigs —one blip and poof, all gone, done in. Bye-bye.

PS: Of note, just happen to find, coincidentally,  the week of  ....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 25, 2017

Federal Agent, Colombian Narcotics Kingpin and Colombian National Indicted for Conspiracy, Corruption and Obstruction

A Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent and two Colombian nationals were charged today by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida with conspiracy, corruption and obstruction of justice charges stemming from their participation in a bribery scheme that resulted in the dismissal of an indictment filed against one of the Colombian nationals in exchange for cash and other things of value, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Special Agent in Charge Michael T. Moreland of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Southeast Region; and Special Agent in Charge Jay Donly of the Office of Inspector General (OIG), HSI.

According to the indictment, Special Agent Christopher V. Ciccione, II, 52, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, was the case agent for Operation Cornerstone, a large-scale Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force case that resulted in indictments of Colombia-based cocaine traffickers from the Cali Cartel, including Jose Piedrahita Ceballos, a Colombian national.  The indictment alleges that Piedrahita gave benefits to Ciccione in exchange for official acts that resulted in the dismissal of the indictment against Piedrahita.  Juan Carlos Velasco, also a Colombian national, served as the intermediary between Ciccione and Piedrahita.  Ciccione ultimately succeeded in getting the Cornerstone indictment dismissed against Piedrahita in exchange for approximately $20,000 in cash, dinner, drinks and prostitution.  

The indictment further alleges that while maintaining contact with Piedrahita, Ciccione misled the U.S. Attorney’s Office and HSI management and altered DHS records to represent to decision makers that Piedrahita was “unidentified” and that his case should be dismissed because “all investigative efforts” were “exhausted.”  In addition, Ciccone falsified the concurrence of several other federal agents and even attempted to parole Piedrahita into the U.S.         

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Piedrahita as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act on May 3, 2016. 

ICE-OPR, Department of Homeland Security’s OIG and the FBI investigated the case.  The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and Office of the Judicial Attaché in Colombia, and the Drug Enforcement Administration provided valuable assistance to the investigation.  Trial Attorneys Luke Cass and Jennifer A. Clarke of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.
Attachment(s): 
Component(s): 
Press Release Number: 
17-1052

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-agent-colombian-narcotics-kingpin-and-colombian-national-indicted-conspiracy

Friday, October 20, 2017

You, Danny and a train set


Hi Carole, forever my love ... Danny and Elena came over last night, grand they were here, my depression vast, their presence warmth and love.  They bought Key Lime sherbet, Key West in thought and we shared stories about you, of you.  Lit candles. Broke bread. Sherbet first, then pizza and salad, topped with a fruit torte. Poignantly sweet.

Also today, donated the grandkids toys from Miguel and William to Christ the King Annual Fall Elephant sale, the train set with a control sounding like the toot-toot whistle of a train with working platforms, a water mill, a grain miller and more. And while glad will be going to other children, sad too, because the set with its tracks and tunnels and cars lived here for a more than decade and had been played with, traveled the countryside on a bedroom floor.

Chuga, chuga, chuga like railroad train, come on baby do the locomotion.

Love, sojourns and time a-going.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

October 19, 2017. Carole, come hither ....


Hi my love, you must want me to live a long time because you keep placing obstacles; our book almost as it was months ago: not progressing.  Hurricane Irma delayed yet not an excuse. The reality is I'm stuck.

Interestingly, in keeping with your appearing within the week before you died, you found me again.  A reach beyond memories and tears.

Days surrounding, a predicament from a news article October 14. Kingpin dealings from 1993 thought closed, has the justice department taking a second look. You'd always maintained there would be more, and there is, close to home, connected.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-agent-colombian-narcotics-kingpin-and-colombian-national-indicted-conspiracy

OK, so in matters of the space time continuum, maybe not as momentous as Einstein's gravitational ripples recently proven, but still a foreshadowing, a pathway.  My quandary, how to express this 16 years after your death, your premonition come true.

Should psychic Elena, whom the reader met earlier, be called upon? Or Leslie?  We are writing creative nonfiction, so what is the method, a technique, for bringing this new find forward?

You directed me to the material, now please channel your creativity! An epilogue seems like a cheat, shortchanges us. You with your mentoring voice — a tap, a whisper: insight. Show me.


Thursday, September 7, 2017

The Sound and the Fury, nice title, not mine!

Oh Carole,

Hurricane Irma will soon be upon us. Your boys should be fine, managed to find a tree trimmer! Oh Carole, so wish you were here, maybe you are?

Friday, August 25, 2017

Yellow paramecium scarf

HI CArole,

Dreaming of you lots, working on our book, hopefully to finish before I die.  Sometimes I think you are deliberately holding me up,  putting ideas in my head, suggestions for development, you'd do in a flat second, not me — is a labor of love trying regardless.

Last night I dreamed we were having a garage sale together, the yard undeterminable.  I didn't break down until I saw your yellow paramecium scarf .... a silk square of mellow yellow with tiny red or maybe sea/ algae green paramecium — same color of a dress you'd had — paramecium  on a floaty static background.

PS: Yesterday marked 25 years since Hurricane Andrew, the vision of you, hanging onto the wrought iron railings on the the front porch, your clothes blowing ... a Gone With the Wind image...yesterday.

Sept 7, 2017

And NOW, 25 years and two weeks later, Hurricane Irma is upon us, we will get a direct hit, and are way underinsured. Love you forever, and ever, come what may.


Wednesday, July 5, 2017

July 5, 2017

HI Carole,

Posting image from a few weeks ago, June 2017, Danny amazing! He is working on a series in Houston, here now for a short while.  Hesitate to say, 'shooting' when mean video-ing  because of of the nonsense going on, you never know.  Josh was here, too, didn't make it into image, Miguel jumped in between at last minute, six-year-old Will in front, wearing a Great Smoky Mountains National Park hat bought for Miguel years earlier.  Sam took sitting from couch across. Same sofa as when  you were last here ... OH, Carole ...

























***

Slippery slope: USA is a super mess with demented bully Trump tweeting and lying, Trump can't keep his own stories straight. Frightening: false truths,  "Alternative facts" is a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway during a Meet the Press interview on January 22, 2017, ...

Hacked election, first time ever,  Mr. Misogynist, major religious discrimination, travel bans without precedent — grandmothers aren't close relatives.  Russian $$$$ ties and influence, attempting to undo healthcare, Medicaid, climate stuff, is horrific.

Tweeting Trump's lawyers all over the place, unlike anything previous ... greed beyond the imaginable. Heartless and cruel. Shameful. Embarrassing.

A crass administration without dignity. The good ole boys, unfit Trump, and Trumpeters, bulldog snarl-gritty. Dangerous. Life taking.

How our father played you.

***

Revisionist History Alert: An image of Amelia Earhart photo revealed. She and navigator died in the Marshall Islands ... 80 years ago. Link as of July 5, 2017.

Monday, May 15, 2017

Mother's Day, day after 2017

Hi my love, my forever schwester, always missing you, remembering .... you with flowers for us.

Spoke with your boys, our boys, Danny mostly on the day, he called from Galveston, working on a TV series, should be back in Miami in few weeks for a short time, has free hotel points, wants to travel world, some of it, then back to Houston for work. Is a fine job for him.

Josh today, he's still writing, has received good feedback.

William had first sleepover Saturday night, was grand. Sam made pancakes Sunday morning, needed to deliver William to his mother for the day.  Celeste sent stone crabs for Hanukkah on Mother's Day, a fantastic treat, so yummy. In season now ....

I donated our Mother's wedding china to Goodwill today, someone will appreciate the set, I never used, and finally no longer felt obligated to keep.  Kids passed on china, not their thing, children don't want that sort of stuff anymore.  Have so much decluttering to do, a houseful.

Continue attempting our book, still angst writing it, even with speculative added .... the sections on Mom are a hoot, the gift she left us — copy for our manuscript.

XOXOXOX








Monday, April 10, 2017

Passover, April 10, 2017

Hi my sweetest love, very sad without you. Missing you dearly, what year shall I focus on, a lifetime? ...

Will be a small gathering, Curt, hubby dearest with a new job, Danny in Texas on a project until June,  Josh here but working. He signed up for an author read, good for him! Celeste and Miguel will arrive, hoping Sam, too. Grandson William is away on cruise with other family, spring break.  He was supposed to spend the night Saturday, this first sleepover here, but barfed instead, red berries beforehand. He is the sweetest 6-year-old kid, and Sam is doing a fabulous daddy job.

Have the retro kitschy metal Seder plate Little Genie's dad gave you .... green and gold with molded images, not sure what will put on, haven't the official stuff.

Little Genie quit her teaching job, after earning a Masters, is doing a rodeo of flea markets! Sound familiar!

Love you always.

April 11, next morning, we broke matzos together, no Seder, and I am whipped, chicken didn't cook, must be me, not the new oven!  ...

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Hey, Carole

Love you and so missing you .... keeping forgetting how to sign in, google knows, had birthday candles.  Can you imagine the billions of people born today, all seeing candles???

Big tiff between youtube and google, more artificial intelligence ...  social marketing, ads, fake news, revenue stream, the goings-on after your time but the same greed.

AI propagating itself, showing its hand getting schmuckola into white house, lower case on purpose. Schmuckola there and we are so screwed. Bots, cybots, hacked!

More developed than Watergate.

Not to mention climate change.

Gave grandson Miguel a copy of Brave New World, hope he reads, will be 13 yrs-old in a few weeks.

Have a blurred pic from Monday with near teen Miguel, adorable six-yr-old William and old farty Nana. Gotta figure how to transfer from other computer ... not i-clouded, or whatever the word.  Missed Josh and Danny, they were working, not a biggie, the dirty one, 69 ...  true dirty, heartbreaking grime is not having you at my side.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Pussyhat Rebellion!!!!

Oh Carole, you'd have love it — Pussyhat Rebellion!!!!

Russian Revolution, 1917
Trump's American and the Women's March, 2017

4:54 PM
January 21 by Rachel Weiner and Aaron Davis, Washington Post

RELATED COVERAGE
ON NPR
Pussyhats! on NPR (article)

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Way Past

Hi Carole,

An FPL guy was here, electric pole placement for Pinecrest Floods development still without drainage. Large ficus will go, might miss, uncertain about African Tulip tree, the parrots love it, would miss if were cutdown or out. Cool species of palm tree will stay.  Very old oaks replanted in front of flooding field, Pinecrest PLAce, didn't make it. IS so nuts, no drainage and with water rising from underneath. A wall holding all the water inside the luxury home plat, at least not spilling over the berm into our yard. Again, water rising from underneath ... . Anyway, the project manager who came looked like our past; cousin Robbie, his name Rob, too. I flashed with you at my side more than half a century ago — yesterday.

I called Fran, in RI, left a message, we small talk every few months, have not seen each in ages unlikely we will again. Poor Fran.

Robbie died about a year after you passed, age 56 or 57. He'd completed a genealogy that I never received, he must have known. I believe he left behind two college age children perhaps like yours at the time ... time ....

Love and hugs to you with your glimmer, and glint.

PS: Your former  professor, Frank  Bidart, has a poem in the New Yorker, Jan 23, 2017. You'd love it, Mourning What We Though We Were, a rise against Trump, the cover, too. Titled, At the Wheel by Barry Blitt, Sardonic.  Will try to capture and post. Ignorance, the poverty of mind amazing.

Current: from NYT

WHITE HOUSE MEMO

Trump Lashes Out as Approval Ratings Dip to Record Lows

President-elect Donald J. Trump will take office with less popular support than any new president in modern times, an array of polls show.

Earth Sets Temperature Record for 3rd Straight Year

  • It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
  • The data show that temperatures are heading toward levels that many believe will pose a profound threat to civilization.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

January 3, 2017, your 67 birthday

It is the worst of times, the best of times, the most appalling of times. All the more anguished without you here.

On the bright side, cousins are getting together today, the younger ones who have not met, or did so long ago, they forgot, one Hanukkah here perhaps four years ago. Sam and 5-year-old William are picking up your Danny, Josh out of town, and heading up to see Joy and her three kids, ages 10-15, Celeste and 12-year-old Miguel going too. Superb they are getting together.

For Hanukkah, I decorated inside of our fireplace with your Peruvian Ayacucho clay steeple / village folk art piece and surrounded it in tiny white lights. Through the fireplace screen, looked like snow falling, way gentle and sweet.

***
An ambience of serenity despite. 
***
Hello Carole, began message in newer computer, emailed to older one to post. CAn’t keep track of all passwords so it is  Pinecrest Floods blog entry from one, to our Extralove.com and this.  

Passwords, speaking of them — our US electorate system was hijacked, RIGGED, HACKED, INFILTRATED toyed with, — our entire supposedly constitutional democracy - poof. Up in air. Dirty air, climate change a hoax.

Undone by people  like my 40-year-old daughter.  That hurts. She voted for Clarabelle Trump, the alt-right fascist, so scary that our once mighty press, now fearful, avoids the F term, inventing the alt-right synonym instead. The mood is gloomy, despairing. 

Earlier today: With No Warning, House Republicans Vote to Hobble Independent Ethics Office, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/with-no-warning-house-republicans-vote-to-hobble-independent-ethics-office.html, after NYT wrote an article about kleptocracy : a government with corrupt rulers (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power.


House GOPers Vote to Gut Independent Ethics Office

"House Republicans, overriding their top leaders, voted on Monday to significantly curtail the power of an independent ethics office set up in 2008 in the aftermath of corruption scandals that sent three members of Congress to jail." 

Eric Lipton reports for the New York Times January 2, 2017. 


"House Republicans Vote To Rein In Independent Ethics Office" (Washington Post)

Even if it doesn't stick, the fact that they tried, wanted to. Attempted whittling of eliminate independent ethics office.  Our renegade Trump White House, the entire entourage / family /clan in on the take.***

I realize my daughter works hard, an ER nurse dealing with matters of life and death on a daily basis, comes home and seeks out mindless crap — the Kardashian sisters, glitz and big boobs. Believing her desire for distraction, entertainment, is the only way I’ll manage to excuse. Make peace. How could she?

How old was our father when he changed from a social democrat to a rabid Republican?  The Nixon era— would that place him age 41 or 44? Not sure of his birth year, won't bother looking, timing close enough. Then I wonder about genetics, the kickstart point, Celeste and her grandfather, Julius, close in age. 

Latest on Nixons’s corruiopn to rig an election: 1/2/17: Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson’s Vietnam Peace Talks in ’68, Notes Show, didn’t want war to stop because if would hurt his chances for the presidency. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnsons-vietnam-peace-talks-in-68-notes-show.html
  • **
I am so embarrassed, distressed, all the more because her son, my 12-year-old grandson is brilliant. And Trump’s greed, his misogyny, bullying, hateful ways are far from exemplary, certainly not attributes / values to  embrace. I won't be around to see the play-out years ahead, those dystopian sci-fi predictions reality.  

Internet  freedom corralled, the plutocracy ruling class — burnt crumbs for us, we the remaining 99%. And atop this, my daughter's inability to discern Facebook fake news from journalism a gut-wrenching shame.

Carole, remember that 1990’s unit on media and propaganda you developed for your students at FIU? I have a copy somewhere here. The medium has changed so drastically since then you’d not recognize it. 

If still viable, the links and copy below from Wikipedia.

Citizenfour Citizenfour is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras, concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. The film had its US premiere on October 10, 2014, at the New York Film Festival and its UK premiere on October 17, 2014, at the BFI London Film Festival. The film features Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, and was co-produced by Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky, with Steven Soderbergh and others serving as executive producersCitizenfour received critical acclaim upon release, and was the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars.


Killswitch Killswitch is a documentary film about the battle for control over the Internet. It made its international debut, playing alongside Citizenfour at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2014.[4] In 2015, it screened on Capitol Hill, as well as film festivals on four continents (Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America). On September 13, 2016 Killswitch was released on iTunes movies, and within 24 hours it was trending as a top 5 on their documentary page. Lawrence LessigTim Wu, and Peter Ludlow frame the story of two young hackersAaron Swartz and Edward Snowden, who symbolize the disruptive and dynamic nature of the Internet. Their lives parallel one another as they free information and take on the system, putting them directly in the cross-hairs of some of the most powerful interests in the world. Swartz leads the charge in defeating the Stop Online Piracy Act, and pays a heavy price, but not before he challenges his mentor, Lawrence Lessig, to take up his call and lead a crusade to restore our democracy. Snowden is forced to flee the country and ponder his next move.[9][10][11]


The Third Reich. Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over nearly all aspects of life. … Racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime.