Friday Miscellany

From Darlene:
FASCINATING!!!! JUST FASCINATING! Enjoy - BEFORE WATCHING VIDEO:
Read below for background information.

In a Chinese modern dance competition on TV one very unique couple won
one of the top prizes. The lady, in her 30's, was a dancer who had
trained since she was a little girl... Later in life, she lost her entire
left arm in an accident and fell into a state of depression for a few years.

Someone then asked her to coach a Children's dancing group. From that
point on, she realized that she could not forget dancing. She still
loved to dance and wanted to dance again. So, she started to do some of
her old routines, but, having lost her arm, she had also lost her balance.
It took a while before she could even make simple turns and spins
without falling. Then she heard of a man in his 20s who had lost a leg
in an accident. He had also fallen into the usual denial, depression
and anger type of emotional roller coaster. But, she was determined to
find him and persuade him to dance with her.. He had never danced, and to
dance with one leg....are you joking with me? ??"No way!"

But, she didn't give up, and he reluctantly agreed thinking, "I have
nothing else to do anyway." She started to teach him dancing. The two
broke up a few times because he had no concept of using muscle, how to
control his body, and knew none of the basic things about dancing. When
she became frustrated and lost patience with him, he would walk out.

Eventually, they came back together and started training seriously.
They hired a choreographer to design routines for them. She would fly
high (held by him) with both arms (a sleeve for an arm) flying in the air.
He could bend horizontally supported by one leg with her leaning on
him, etc. In the competition, as you will see, they dance beautifully and
they legitimately won the competition." When I watched this I didn't even
realize that she was missing an arm because I was focusing on the guy with
only one leg.

Really quite amazing!

"Look! The United States!!"

There's a certain spot on the Jersey Turnpike going toward NYC when the road rises and you can see the NYC skyline like a distant City of Oz. When Sam was 5 and saw it for the first time, he said, "Look! The United States!"

This photo does not capture that moment, but it's the NYC skyline as we saw it on July 5, coming in from Glen Ridge to take Annie to orientation for her summer class and pick up Laura, who was flying in from the UK.

On July 4, there was a parade in Montclair:





MORE TO COME

Happy Canada Day!!

Many (well, at least TWO) of XE's most faithful readers live in Canada, and since today is their grand national holiday, here's wishing both of them a very happy Canada Day!!

Canada is a fascinating place.
It has the highest quality of life of any nation in the world!!

I love Canada. I don't know what they include in the quality of life measure, but it's always seemed to me to be a VERY CIVILIZED PLACE!!

Welcome, Brenda!

My popular, energetic former co-worker at FNMA, Marilyn Olson, is affectionately known to one and all as "Mo." She and her late husband, Lyle, had one child, Brenda, and during my 10 years at Magids, I enjoyed hearing about Brenda's exploits as she got through elementary and high school and went off to college (Iowa State at Ames, I think). Then Mo and I lost touch until Mo, retired now, popped up on Facebook this spring, some 20+ years later. It's been great getting brought up to date on Mo's amazing schedule. Mo always arrived on Monday exhausted, then picked up steam as the week progressed. I was the opposite. I was fresh as a daisy on Monday and wiped out by Friday.

Mo just introduced her Facebook friends to Brenda's wonderful blog on life in small-town Iowa. How coincidental is this that her oldest (and youngest) daughter blogs about life in rural (well, that's most of the state) Iowa, and my oldest daughter, Peggy, blogs about life in rural Scotland?! Brenda and Peggy both have self-deprecating humor when it coms to naming their blogs. Brenda is no more boring than Peggy is lazy.

Gentle readers, please enjoy Brenda's Boring Blog!

Thank God, It's SENATOR AL FRANKEN, D-MN!!!!

I googled "Al Franken's best quotes," and here's a remarkable collection from "Al Franken Sense, the Al Franken Forum." Al is the kind of Democrat I can relate to. He's also funny.

A sample of the wit & wisdom of Chairman Al:

In many ways I'm still a Hubert Humphrey Democrat -- someone who believes in afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. A society is judged by how it treats the elderly, the sick, the impoverished. To me it's a matter of ethics and compassion.
- Al Franken, Playboy interview

No Child Left Behind is the most ironically named act, piece of legislation since the 1942 Japanese Family Leave Act.
- Al Franken, in response to the 2004 SOTU address

Oh, What Doesn't Kill You Can Have Lingering Aftereffects!
- Al Franken, Oh, the Things I Know, chapter title

Read the rest, too....

Yeah, them too....

The "Money" section of the NYTimes today has a great headline: "Et tu, AARP? Good Guys Cut 401(k)s, Too". The article, by Ron Lieber, may be good, but the headline stopped me in my tracks. It's clever, but the headline writer was too charitable.

AARP sold us out to Big Pharma with the Medicare Drug Act. My prescription prices DOUBLED way back when that little piece of legislative jiujitsu passed, and I quit AARP on the spot. "Good guys"? I don't think so. I haven't been able to bring myself to forgive them, either, despite their wonderful magazine.

But that's ok. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a great section on forgiveness in her intriguing book, Women Who Run with the Wolves. Without trying to find the book in this place so I can look it up (a three-day job), this is the main thing I remember her saying about forgiveness: It happens in stages. You can't just "forgive" someone and feel all better all at once. Estes says the first stage of forgiving an injury is to quit obsessing over it. Just quit thinking about it endlessly. Makes sense to me. I guess I was getting past stage one with AARP, too. I'd pretty much forgotten all about them.

Except, since retiring, I've started to notice all the goodies you can get now with an AARP membership. About all an AARP card used used to get you was senior rates on movies and a 10% discount at certain hotel chains. Nowadays the senior rate on movies is the same as the matinee rate for everyone else. You have go to go a movie after 6 p.m. if you want the old folks' discount. That's too LATE!! I rarely go out after supper.

Still, there's lots more now for anyone with an AARP membership: you can get special prices or discounts on everything from cruises to cell phones to tow trucks.

Well, too bad. They still sound like their main goal is watching out for #1, never mind their constituents OR their workers. Fooey.

Chicken ala Carte

Thanks to Darlene for sending this today....TGIF!

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Same old same old

Nobody wants to pay for a transit system in DC, especially the pols who love to meddle in our business--like the gun nuts making sure DC can't ban handguns. Meanwhile, nine people, including the young mother driving the train who fought valiantly to stop it with its worthless brakes, are dead because the Metro put off not just replacing the cars but fixing the brakes.

And the bullets are flying where I live, but that doesn't bother them. They don't live here, and neither do their constituents (who nevertheless flock to DC with their chidren whenever school is out--and ride our metro).

Robert McCartney, reporting in the WashPost, has a great column this morning. Salient sentences (love the sound of that....ha):

There's no good alternative to renovating Metro, given the need to reduce traffic and greenhouse gases, and to move around the 2 million new residents that the region is expected to attract by 2030.

...

Last year, Congress authorized $150 million a year for Metro after the District, Virginia and Maryland promised to match it: $50 million from each jurisdiction each year.

Maddeningly, however, the Obama administration's budget for the fiscal year starting in October did not include the money. One factor was federal unhappiness with squabbling among the three jurisdictions over an issue regarding the Metro board. Getting that money this year should be a top priority for the region's congressional delegation.

Hey, Mr. President....You live here, too. We can't all send our kids to school in cars driven by the Secret Service. The rich bankers got theirs, and the Pentagon gets billions to kill people, other countries' and our own. What about the rest of us? Please get with it on public transportattion.