Saturday morning in our hood; Tuesday morning at the polls

Posted on November 5, 2018 by sheilawill

Strolling to Reid Park for the Firefighters Chili Cook-off Saturday morning, you wouldn’t know that demagoguery is at play across the land.

Sampling tiny cups of chili I wonder which of the all-male chefs might agree with my progressive politics. My favorite was Space Force chili, concocted with bacon and brisket, melded sweetly and spicily with a smoky flavor. All of the concocters were nice, polite.

How could any of them be right-wing white nationalists?

We walk home along the Treat Walkway. A woman with a swinging dark ponytail approaches us, asking, “Want to buy some liquor? I’ve got everything here in my bag.”

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“We don’t drink,” I sort of lie.

“Well you should,” she retorts. I’ve got rum, tequila, and gin.” She shows us three bottles, not taking no for an answer. Following the midterms, I’ll start drinking more? I hope not.

We head to our favorite Little Free Library, checking for throwaway mysteries. It’s such a nice neighborhood. Three residents just finished offering a recycling workshop. One man thanks us for checking out their little library.

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Poetry mailbox on the Treat Walkway. Take one. Leave one. Community sharing!

Our next destination is Barrio Bread. Do I smell the yummy baking aroma as we turn the corner? There’s always a line to pick up bread — whatever traditional baker Don Guerra’s artisan loaves are that day,  including apricot-cranberry, olive focaccia, or multi-seed (my favorite). Happy customers leave with bags clutched close, like a football or a baby.

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Everyone smiles, as they leave, regardless of where they line up in Arizona’s voting array, one-third each Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. Senate races in Arizona and Nevada are crucial wins if Dems are to flip the U.S. Senate.

Today is Monday. I’ll get up at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow, take a quick shower, pack the car with my knitting, reading, pot-luck fruit salad for poll-working fifteen hours at St. Mark’s Church. I’ll be the ID Clerk, greeting voters of all parties, checking their registrations.

Today I bite my nails. I’m agitated.

Tomorrow I’ll be guessing by how much Democratic voters outweigh Republicans. At the August primary it was 3-to-1. Let’s hope our precinct goes wild for democracy.

This morning on the radio I heard Trump rail at one of his out-of-control campaign rallies,  something akin to: “If the Democrats win your children won’t have a country anymore!”

Projection? Let’s stop him. Tomorrow.  Vote Democratic! Vote for women, minorities, and young candidates who speak truth to power!

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, Fight wimpiness, For Love of History, Out West, politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“I am leaving, I am leaving but the fighter still remains…”

Posted on October 30, 2018 by sheilawill

So sang Joan Baez last night at the Tucson leg of her one-year farewell tour.

We need dynamic social justice fighters. And Joan Baez? Who has been more of a stellar role model spanning her fifty-year career?

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Joan Baez with Craig Sumberg, executive director of the Fox Tucson Theatre

“It’s been a splendid evening,” she said, waving to the audience following nearly two hours of gorgeous singing, which showed the dynamic range of her one-and-only voice, matched to exquisite guitar strumming.

If it was splendid for her, I deemed it the most perfect concert ever. Lightning struck as I understood each  articulated word.

Wow. I couldn’t remember the last time I didn’t ask, “What, what did she say?”

Which makes me think: not only about garbled words, the illegitimacy of facts referred to as “fake media,” and the parade of lies streaming from our president’s mouth.

Tomorrow he’s headed to Pittsburgh, scene of the horrifying massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 27. Some Jewish leaders say he’s not welcome unless he denounces his fellow white nationalists. That won’t happen.

Instead, he’ll read a lovely speech from a teleprompter, attempting to sound like a compassionate human being. Within minutes he’ll hop back onto his tweeting hobby horse.

Consider this: Trump has tweeted that the “caravan” of poor Latin American refugees are planning “an invasion of our country,” similar to the Pittsburgh murderer who accused Jews of “bringing in invaders who were killing his people.”

Last night, Joan Baez sang “The President Sang Amazing Grace,” Barrack Obama’s response to Charleston’s horrific massacre in a place of worship.

Can anyone imagine our current president expending such compassion or caring about anyone other than himself?

I’ll bet many Pittsburgh Jewish community members would prefer listening to the soothing, magnificent voice of Joan Baez tomorrow.

Not the fake empathy of a fake president.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Fight wimpiness, For Love of History, Journalism/Writing, politics, The Rest of the World | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s now or never…

Posted on October 12, 2018 by sheilawill

IMG_1550The seventies are different from the sixties. Stiffer, slower movements in my body and brain. Words fly by avoiding recognition. Synapses disregard memories.

Seventy-two years old? How did I get here? My grown-up kids would say I never acted my age.

I cling to other people’s surprise when they discover how old I am.

If someone tells me “You don’t look it!” my day brightens.

Yet, being fifteen pounds overweight bewilders me.

“Oh, if only I could lose ten pounds,” I used to say. Not anymore. I’m healthy. I don’t overeat.  If I eat a cookie I gain a pound. My stomach sticks out despite three weekly Pilates classes. Estrogen, long gone.

So I’ve made a few decisions.

Decision One: I’m not going to Weight Watchers or going on a diet. I’m not avoiding a chocolate chip cookie following dinner at Rocco’s. Hell, we walk home. Shouldn’t that count for something?

Decision Two: I’m front-loading travel during the next few years. Isn’t it clear that I won’t want to take twenty-hour flights around the world when my legs stiffen up more?

Decision Three: I’ll travel to Southern France, Tuscany, San Miguel Allende, and Mount Desert Island, Maine, in 2019 — in addition to Minneapolis and Chapel Hill. Perhaps I’ll drive home from Thanksgiving with Dan, stopping in hip Greenville and at the new Legacy Museum in Montgomery, seeing artsy Marfa, meandering to Big Bend National Park.

Realization: I was a kid in my sixties scurrying over rocks in Sabino Canyon or on Mt. Desert Island. My body didn’t harbor aches and pains. Like clockwork they arrived at age seventy: arthritis in my right thumb, precipitating my first physical therapy sessions; the need to stretch my feet before getting out of bed so I wouldn’t hobble to the bathroom; three cancer scares (breast, leg, jaw), which luckily all turned out benign. PHEW.

It’s a good sign that I find learning thrilling. Watching my two book group friends jazzing it up last night at Hacienda del Sol reminded me how I’m itching to dance more.

I’m not done. Contentment drops by often. No rushing around, less stress about work and kids, no guilt consuming two pieces of dark chocolate every morning.

Posted in Baby Boomers, kinky eardrums, Neuroscience needs me | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Truth Rejected: What Susan Collins omits

Posted on October 7, 2018 by sheilawill

Sen. Susan Collins is a right-wing Republican tool, not a moderate. Her Oct. 5 Senate speech, which explained her “Yes” vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, reveals truth rejected rather than reasoned support of the nominee’s judicial judgement. 

I’ve lived in Tucson for 16 years, although I still consider myself a Mainer. Senator Susan Collins spoke at Mt. Desert Island High School in the 1990s, when I taught social studies there. She was nice enough. Smart enough, or authentic enough? I didn’t think so.

I liked former Senator Olympia Snowe better. She visited our island high school, too.

Following her retirement from the Senate in 2013, Snowe spoke at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law in Tucson.

We chatted a bit after her talk. Snowe recalled a conversation she and I had at a small cocktail party in Maine, when I  commended her for her civilized treatment of then President Bill Clinton, who was acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial.

“The public has no idea of how far the right-wing fanatics wanted to go,” Snowe told me at that long-ago party. “It was obscene.”

Susan Collins condoned her support of Kavanaugh in our most recent over-the-top politicized debacle.

Read the Oct. 5 Collins speech to her Senate colleagues. Crafted by staff members to explain decision-making based on previous Supreme Court cases, did it serve as her attempt to convince us that Judge Kavanaugh wouldn’t upend legal precedent to reverse Roe v. Wade, or other decided established law?

“The confirmation process has become so dysfunctional that it looks more like a caricature of a gutter-level political campaign than a solemn occasion,” said Collins, voicing her concern about the politicization of the high court during the last 30 years.

She’s usually “concerned,” then votes the opposite of the issues she’s concerned about.

Susan Collins neglected to mention the most egregious issues politicizing the Supreme Court in my lifetime: the controversial Bush v. Gore decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush – by a 5-4 vote along party lines – following the 2000 election in which former Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by a half-million votes, and the total disregard by Republicans of Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, with 10 months remaining in the least scandal-ridden presidency in our history.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider Garland’s nomination, the complete opposite of his rush to judgement to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.

Susan Collins neglected the Merrick Garland travesty. In her speech, Collins only pointed out that Garland and Kavanaugh agreed on many cases while sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals together.

Susan Collins neglected to mention that the American Bar Association expressed concerns during Kavanaugh’s 2006 confirmation hearing for the DC circuit court, his first appointment to the judiciary.

At that hearing, Senator Ted Kennedy referred to Kavanaugh as “a political operative,” who worked closely with Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political fixer. Senator Patrick Leahy couldn’t get a straight answer from Kavanaugh, demanding that he “stop playing games.”

Collins did mention President Bill Clinton’s nomination of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993, confirmed by a Senate vote of 96-3, while Clinton was embroiled in the Whitewater investigation.

Collins neglected to mention that Donald Trump is currently under investigation to determine if foreign influence secured his presidency.

Remember when Collins became the 51st Republican to vote for the January tax bill?McConnell promised that her measure to lower the cost of “Obamacare” premiums would someday become law. She was duped then. She’s been duped now.

I agree with Senator Collins that we should never abandon our long-held adage of “innocent till proven guilty.” Perhaps that is why there should have been a thorough FBI investigation, which included more witnesses in the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation against Judge Kavanaugh.

Collins neglected to blame the Clintons for Kavanaugh’s disruptive confirmation process. Instead she blamed “special interest groups,” without naming names.

Despite Kavanaugh’s outrageously partisan declaration that his confirmation process represented “revenge for the Clintons,” Collins somehow imagines that he “will work to lesson the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have fewer 5-4 decisions.”

Wasn’t his temperament that sounded like a political operative, not a judge on the highest court in the land, enough to disqualify him?

Susan Collins “stands for nothing,” which Mainers won’t forget during her upcoming 2020 reelection campaign. They have already raised nearly $2 million to support her Democratic opponent, whoever that may be.

Who knows? Perhaps in 2020 she will apologize in a memoir written from Presque Isle, Maine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Fight wimpiness, For Love of History, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Susan Collins, hurry next door for a chat with Patrick Leahy…

Posted on September 9, 2018 by sheilawill

Vermont’s two longtime senators, in my view, are the best of the lot. Patrick Leahy exudes integrity. Bernie Sanders is, well, Bernie, a man of the people, a true believer, a good socialist.

It was 1974 when I taught American Politics at Hartford High School in White River Jct., Vermont, when Patrick Leahy first ran for the U.S. Senate.

My students and I counted the Senate ballots on election night. We guessed early on that Leahy had won, the first Democratic senator ever elected from Vermont, now the longest-serving U.S. senator.

Leahy is not a grandstander. He’s a true Vermonter. His word is sacrosanct.

All those years prior to the rise of Rudi Giuliani with his make-believe lawyer shenanigans, when contracts were often sealed by a handshake in New England towns,  Leahy learned integrity.

If he says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath, you can take it to the bank.

Susan Collins is mixed up. Staying in the Senate may be sacrosanct to her, but at what cost?

Mainers are tired of her concern, her reservations. Oh she voted against tearing down the Affordable Care Act, only when it became the safe maneuver within her party.

Sen. Collins: We’ve got the picture. You’re wobbling on the fence prior to the Kavanaugh vote.

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Susan Collins, you’re about to land on your ass. Save yourself. Rush next door to your Vermont neighbor’s office. Now.

 

 

Posted in Fight wimpiness, For Love of History, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Go Vote…like your life depends on it!

Posted on September 1, 2018 by sheilawill

Sitting at the Red Garter bar alone on a Friday night, a perky young blond woman sips on her watered-down drink.

I’m considering aloud which beer to order.

Would I like the light, citrusy Barrio Brewery beer on tap?

“Oh, that’s a good one,” she chimes in, which leads to more chatting.

“I don’t vote,” she tells me. “My husband knows all about that government stuff. I don’t.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I assure her. “You’re a nurse. You’ve got a brain.”

On education, she’s clearly frustrated by the size of her six-year-old son’s first-grade classroom. “Thirty-two kids in first grade is too much,” she repeats at least three times.

“See, you know how to vote. Who’s going to do something for education, for your son? Arizona ranks last in per-pupil spending behind Mississippi and Alabama,” I say.

“Really?” She seems distressed for her dishonored home state.

“Garcia, the Democratic candidate, is a former teacher,” I tell her.  “This governor hasn’t done a thing for education. In fact, he mysteriously disappears funds allotted for it.”

“Oh, he was a teacher,” she says, encouragingly.

Perhaps she’ll end up voting for the first time, a professional woman in her thirties. Imagining that her husband is on the other side, that she’s afraid to speak up in opposition, I feel sorry for her.

So this is what we’re up against: nonvoters. But The Pew Research Center reports that primary voting is up, especially for Democrats.

Here’s what we can do: chat more about the importance of the 2018 midterm elections – at bars, schools, dentist offices, or waiting in line  to check out at Trader Joe’s.

Will it be more effective than anonymously knocking on strangers’ doors, which I’ve done in the past? I don’t know. It’s worth a try. Let’s go surfing for a Giant Blue Tsunami on Nov. 6!   0901go vote

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, politics, The inconvenient truth about education | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Primary Work

Posted on August 29, 2018 by sheilawill

Guessing each voter’s party affiliation is tiring.

My job as the Opposing Party Judge at the August 28 Arizona Primary allowed me to ask each voter to choose a party ballot.

She’s a Latina so she must be a Democrat, I thought, but at least five well-dressed Latina women veered to the other side.

How come? Teaching at Catalina Foothills High School I discovered that wealthier Latinos held tight to their dollars, and could be as greedy and heartless as some of their white counterparts.

I worked hard for my moneyed status, or my people gained citizenship ‘the right way’ [without trekking through the treacherous Sonoran Desert in scorching heat to reach the U.S. border].

The lovely woman sitting in her wheelchair to my right  — the Republican judge who signed voters in — was reading “The Chicken Soup Guide to the Christian Woman’s Soul.”

“My family was in the military. They were Democrats who referred to the other side as ‘communists,'” she told me. “They were mad when I transitioned to the Republican party a few years ago.”

I didn’t ask why she made such a stupid move as a disabled woman who couldn’t afford medical treatment. So determined was I to not discuss politics, a milestone for me.

Most older men clung to the Republican side.

As she requested a Republican ballot one middle-aged woman said, “I’m beginning to wonder why.” I kept quiet and stayed calm.

After the polls closed a Republican co-worker opined that the Electoral College should be eliminated.

“Well, we would have a different president if that were true,” I said, adding the Hillary Clinton would have won by three million popular votes.

“Oh, I didn’t know that, I only vote,” the lovely disabled woman said.

Of the 2,500 voters in our precinct who opted to vote in person, instead of by mail, three to one requested Democratic ballots, a good sign in hoping-to-flip Arizona.

My favorite sight of the day — regardless of party — occurred when a child accompanied a parent into the voting booth.

Our grandmotherly Republican election inspector stuck an “I voted” sticker on each “helper.”

I can only hope that each of those kids will be better informed voters when it’s their turn to step up.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Walking Weather in Tucson

Posted on August 24, 2018 by sheilawill

If it’s under 80 degrees by 8 a.m., I’m out the door. Friday is Sabino Canyon day. All the recent rain popped circles of orange blossoms atop barrel cacti. Ocotillo branches are leafing out again. The verdant Catalinas harbor happy creatures, I’m guessing; bighorn sheep, black bears, wild turkeys, and other vegans munch on tall grasses high above hikers.

It’s a gray, cool as fall day.

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“Hi Mr. Sabino Canyon,” I call out, as the African-American man runs up the canyon.

“Hi kiddo,” he responds, connecting briefly for a fist pump.

“How often do you come up here?” He’s there whenever I am, imagining pre-Tucsonan native people navigating their horses in the 9,000-plus feet Catalina Mountains.

“Oh, four to six times a week,” he smiles.  “Nice to see you!”

He greets every passerby. I don’t know his name. Next time perhaps I’ll ask.

“It must be fall,” I repeat to Dan. Walking weather will improve as 100-plus days subside.

I require destinations for my ambling. Saturday mornings take me to the Douglas Spring Trail at Speedway’s end. A post-walking visit to Farmer Joe’s Tanque Verde Farm sparks my weekend with tender purple eggplants, pungent arugula (a weed aka rocket plant), stunning pink beets, and a tiny snack bag of tiny tomatoes to explode in my mouth on my drive home.

Later in the day if it’s cool enough I’ll walk to a movie at the Loft or El Con.IMG_1810

Yesterday I saw “The Cakemaker” (really good but I’d like to discuss). “Three Identical Strangers” mysteriously unraveled as last week’s date night stroll.

Spike Lee’s “Black Klansman” is playing at El Con. Good reason for an early afternoon walk. I watched many young people streaming into the nearly full theatre. Perhaps they’ll learn some essential history about the Civil Rights Movement?

Walking governs my life like a benevolent dictator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, For Love of History, Visual Entertainment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

There are places I remember…

Posted on July 28, 2018 by sheilawill

Our July road trip started out right with us collaborating to become the Alpine, Arizona, trivia champions. For one night. I knew that Thomas Jefferson was an architect. Dan’s  logic brought the win home. A free dinner was ours.

Following two days in the cool Alpine mountain air, staying at the wonderful Alpine Inn, we headed out. (I loved that co-owner Burke and I agreed that this country’s problems probably stem from Americans chowing down too much junk food. His breakfasts were scrumptious!)

Driving from Arizona into northwest New Mexico, the landscape of another planet looms in the desert. Hailing from New England, the views still dazzle, even after living here for sixteen years.

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Shiprock

Driving out west lands travelers on Mars. Take Moab, Utah, with its red rock extravagance. Driving out west anchors travelers in a deep ocean of history.

Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly wowed us thirty years ago with an Indian in the Cupboard moment, glimpsing tiny human beings and trucks from its rim. It still wows.

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This was to be my Colorado trip: Pagosa Springs, Salida, Fort Collins, and Steamboat Springs, where hot springs beckoned. The most gorgeous drive I’ve ever experienced — along with the highest mountains at 12,000 feet — transported us to the Continental Divide on the way to Breckinridge, a too chic resort town we’ll avoid next time (there will be a next time for Ouray and other stops along Colorado’s Million Dollar Highway).

My least favorite day was driving across South Dakota, although some more little-known sights than Mount Rushmore or the Black Hills may be worth seeing.

Who doesn’t want a generous, kind heart like the Tin Man at the Land of OZ park in Aberdeen?

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A Lakota woman’s call to Dignity touched my heart at a rest stop in Chamberlain.

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The weirdest stop of all was in Alliance, Nebraska: Carhenge is a replica of England’s Stonehenge, uh, built with cars!

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But the best stop? Seeing my darling grandson, 18-month-old Foss, and my dear son and daughter-in-law at their home in Minneapolis.

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And, driving back to Tucson after two and a half weeks of incredible in-car collaboration, bumping along Indian Route 15, road signs remind us: “Drive in Beauty.”

Posted in Family Matters, For Love of History, Nature Girl, Out West | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Are Congressional Republicans akin to potted plants? How about Wyoming Republicans?

Posted on July 22, 2018 by sheilawill

Here we are in Casper, Wyoming, the state most supportive of Trump. Sipping on a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, eating dill salmon salad sitting in a half avocado, I survey the scene at J’s Pub and Grille.

Nice people all. “I was in the church near Glasgow this week [in eastern Montana],” one man says. I’ve been there — not the church — but campaigning for my favorite presidential candidate, George McGovern in 1972. Perhaps the young men at his table were theology students, hoping to do good in the world.

How could they be, I wonder, if they support current Republican extremism, its faith in liberty above all else? That is, liberty only for themselves to make as much money as possible. Empathy for others? Nah.

Republicans, Don’t Just Tweet About It. Do Something, by Charles J. Sykes, author of “How the Right Lost Its Mind.”

Here’s a link to the piece in the NYTimes, July 22, 2018:

“Republicans in Congress need to realize that they’re not merely constitutional potted plants.”

Ordinary people are most often sunflowers, smiling and sturdy.

How I would love to play journalist in these tiny Great Plains/Mountain towns we’ve been driving through!

“Why, please tell me why, you’re a Republican?” I’d ask. “You’re polite. You smile at me with my weird purple hair.”

Casper citizens have a sense of humor. They love their dogs and their kids. IMG_1741

Casper’s seven strange “wonders of  the world” :

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What was this tall white tower? If you stand underneath it and look up and spin around, you supposedly feel like you’re in an egg beater, which wasn’t to our liking (that’s Dan walking away).

I look forward to reading Our Towns by Jim and Deborah Fallows. 

Their experiences, and mine on this July’s road trip is that friendliness and decency prevail if you don’t discuss politics.

I’m itching to do so. But I remain quiet (who me?).

This morning we ate breakfast at Patty’s Place in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. The owner wore a tie dye t-shirt, played Sixties rock ‘n’ roll. He collected bottles of hot sauce, with labels from Jamaica to California. He also made his own. Perhaps it was like growing his own weed.

An old hippie, I thought. I didn’t ask.

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I believe there is good in the world. But why are there Republicans?

Posted in Fight wimpiness, It's only rock 'n' roll, Journalism/Writing, politics, The Rest of the World | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments