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.

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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

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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 producers. Citizenfour 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 Lessig, Tim Wu, and Peter Ludlow frame the story of two young hackers, Aaron 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. 

Oct 20 2016

Early morning
Profound loss and its yearning

WE were together in dreams, supposed to meet someplace at 3 PM but I was delayed looking for parking and a bottle of wine, wine I know little about yet searching boutique deli stores on dug up streets realizing was late and you drove up to find me in a 1950ish Buick with a buffed silver hood hood, painted to look that way, maybe silver like clouds ... you wore a sweater top and pants, dijon mustardy color, looked great on you even as off to me — maybe dijon to go with wine at outside cafe? — you warm and cuddly and thin and we hugged and hugged outside because you'd found me looking for my car and we hugged-cuddled more and more when you stepped out of the driver's seat, (others, too, in back?) and you were thin and looked lovely and we snuggled in the plush warmth of each others arms before we were no longer there.

October 19, 2016, my dear sister ...

Hi my love,

Your, our, boys were here last night, Josh from his Spain sojourn, Danny from Houston, both back to Houston for work there. They'll be in Miami for December holidays, Hanukkah and Christmas together this year.

Was wonderful, unexpected visit. Sam with Will, 5, Josh and Danny, and Curt. Celeste and Miguel, 12, couldn’t make it ….missed them.

And always, forever missing you.

Danny is so talented, had no clue, he in a 1930’s James Cagney voice played with William all night, motions and words like SNL skits, hilarious! Taught rhythm and some piano, too. Stinted dead bear! Ran around outside with doggie Britney joining in.

Have pics to post, not sure how, in other computer. Ah, figured out!!! Good sister.

Carole, on your yahrzeit.  Fourteen years without you.

Our kids grew up, during and while,

the ache of your absence remains.

Love, Hope

Images below from October 18, 2016 at this Nana's house.

Yom Kippur, 2016

Hello my Carole,

Eyes on your picture on the fireplace mantle. Loving and missing.

Sam with Will, 5, and Celeste with Miguel, 12, the great-nephews you never met were here Monday, condensed High Holidays into one night in-between.  Plus Curt and I.  Josh and Danny both away, hope they'll be here in December, Hanukkah and Christmas together this year.

I'd set the table with real plates and a nice cloth without mentioning the occasion  and Miguel asked if this was the holiday for the shofar. William asked what a shofar was I skipped the whole megillah,  saying it was the Jewish New Year and in old-fashioned times there were no party blowers like nowadays and people used shofars instead. The kids blew and blew.

*

Hurricane Matthew missed, thank the cosmos, maybe you out there, too.

Oven just beeped for frozen dinner pizza on Yom Kippur. Treat of the day was babysitting William here, no school.  We had so much fun, made banana splits, his first. Played pirates, he did space puzzle practically by himself, 100 pieces! Ate and laughed.

Image: PUMPKIN cookie with shofar
Miguel and William, October 2016.

South Beach Zika in Daffodils

Monday. September 12, 2016.  Miami Beach spraying with naled, 6 AM. My grandson's middle school in the target zone and my daughter not believing; unwilling to grasp — refusing.

"I turned off our AC while the spraying went on," a young mother had said, her off-stare on the TV screen, camera panning to her toddler's hand.

The color of your outfit, its luxuriant cotton tunic top, skirt ankle length, Your smile and halo of brown hair surrounding on the dock, cheerful like the concentric buttercup circles clothing you. An  exuberant daffodil-like sun, an outer pink rim on ivory cream, you having morphed into yourself from my daughter's gait, she a background commanding the children to keep moving alongside the dock as the water began its shimmer of sunlight the Zika neurotoxin naled supposedly dissolving in brightness while my daughter believing it — safe — to send her son, my grandson, to school even as those planes droned like airborne concentration camps,  their payload swarming the children below.

Maybe you a reassuring angel yet look where that trusting got you.

So there together! With Hillary — history as backdrop ...

Oh, Carole, we were so together ... you in a white pantsuit, not like Hillary's last night at the DNC, she MAKING history, yours was white cotton with short sleeves and you were worried the gardeners would clip too close to you bushes, a take from Curt voicing his concern at meeting with Village of Pinecrest, as in Pinecrest Floods,   http://pinecrestfloods.blogspot.com,  he  making sure our back fence remains intact when they build the wall in back — a wall on porous limestone, what a colossal fuck up that property development is — filling in wetland, sumpland  that had saved us from stormwaters — had protected, and since filled and elevated for mansions, floods us!!! Butchery, a double whammy and now with ZIKA mosquitoes near.  Can you imagine????

Four local cases, meaning not from traveling, local mosquitoes!!!  And the FDA saying S Fla. should NOT donate blood w/o having it screened. 

Anyway, back to us, we talking and laughing, and I was taking a shower at your house and forgot  a towel but had mistakenly taken cell phone, was large, older type and called you to ask for a towel!!!!! You tossed one in ...

Seeing Hillary Clinton accept the nomination was exhilarating! Being with you this morning in dreams an extension ... tangible, touchable. Real. Realized.

Little Genie stayed over nights before and we were glued to democratic national convention on computer, PBS kept going out, Curt bought  new antenna with rotator, PBS practically the only TV station we watch, PBS  and Svengoolie http://svengoolie.com on Sat nights---very old horror flicks, so campy ....

July 10, 2016

Hi Carole,

Mom's birthday and missing you terribly.

Different worlds.

Love, H

There you were

Hi Cole, dreamed (or dreamt?) or had a dream! about you last night, or who knew what time, I was coming around a corner, modern building, you had a slightly bloodshot eye, not uncommon, hair or dust, and were so happy saying, 'I bet toy didn't expect to me, we are all here.' I never made it to who else was there, starring at you,  and I looked and saw and  began to faint and you held me until I reached the ground and awoke, tears streaming.

Mother's Day, 2016

Hi Carole,

Loving and missing you, the chocolates and flowers, and giggles, 'after all we are mothers, too' .... you'd said with that full, generous smile of yours.

Sentience, April 2016

Hi Carole,

Dreaming still.

Does that imply sentience and/or in a life yet undefined?

Thought from feeling, feeling from thought.


This 2009 Apple computer isn't quite right, literally.

Or maybe it is Google with its algorithms,

or the red truck with its leaking radiator.

Or the full Pesach moon without its Seder and you.

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Passover,  Second Night

Setting sun. Stone crabs ~ oh my goodness, shellfish, divine!!!~ From Celeste, early Mother's Day, late Pesach. Scrumptious.

Curt and I on the patio, fantastic! I imagine you, your gaiety with us.


Sam stopped by to check part for red truck.

Hoping Josh and Danny will make it Wednesday with Celeste and Sam, plus grandkids Miguel and William.

Flux.


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12:28 Sunday morning ....  a Prince Tribute on SNL ~~~~~ 0h CArole!