The heart of the matter burns

ME TO MOM: Sun, Dec 24, 2017, 12:03 PM Bernie is on CNN - Jake Tapper

MOM TO ME: Tue, Dec 26, 2017, 5:45 AM: What did Bernie have to say on CNN? i missed it.

I remember when my 78-year-old mother told me she was moving from Waco back to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was standing outside the neo-Gothic library at King's College London, where I was earning my long-anticipated M.A. in Eighteenth-Century Studies. I wasn't behaving like someone my age, so why should she?

"Mom, you should not be moving so much (she had just moved to Waco from Alice, Texas the year before). Please, Mom, at least promise me this will be your last move."

"I won't promise that."

Bernie, my mother died after a catheterization on her heart. I won't get too much into it except to say had she not been packing boxes in the heat and running to doctors to check on the pain in her chest, she might be alive today. I don't know that for a fact, but her doctor told me, "We were doing it at this time because your mother was moving." She had turned 79 on August 15, 2018, and died exactly a week later, three days after my birthday.

Senator Sanders, your life is more important than running for President. You have already changed this nation. Your upending of the status quo will live on for decades, perhaps centuries. You are already in the history books. But you do not yet want to be history.

Your doctors may not tell you; your wife may not tell you; your friends may not tell you but I will. You are too fragile to pursue this. No one at 78 should be running for President anyway. It is a far more demanding job than working in an office, and at 58 I get tired from the 9 to 5.

What are you trying to prove? I realize aging is scary and death even scarier, but you are acting like my mom. On the one hand it's noble that this resplendent Southern woman was doing yoga and cracking jokes right up until the end, but I would prefer her cooking pot roast in Waco, listening to me whine about my job search.

Today was a beautiful day with AOC's support. But you know in your heart these days are numbered if you continue. My mother adored you and if she could speak from beyond, I know she'd ask you to please bow out. Show the country just how big that heart really is, and do it for your family, your friends, and all of us.

Photo: By Jake Bucci - Bernie Sanders, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46941765

What does age have to do with it? Plenty.

I am just a few months younger than Amy Klobuchar, 58, which in my view seems like the optimum age to be president. We have earned our grey hairs and crow's feet but usually still remember where we put the car keys.

While I did not like the manner in which Julian Castro berated Joe Biden for being forgetful in the last debate, he did raise a salient point. And this is not the first time it has come up in the campaign. What rankles me, though, is why does someone this age think they have the right to the highest office in the country? I am including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in this. Elizabeth Warren is several years younger, and clearly energetic and vibrant.

My point is that if one genuinely cares about the nation and its people, they want to be sure they can care for us for four or eight years. I think of my late mother, may she rest in peace, and how she took in a kitten in her mid-70s. I immediately started to worry about what would happen to that cat if we lost Mom. Turns out, I was right, and neither my brother nor I could keep Susie and she ended up with a family I'll never meet. That breaks my heart.

I am the first to admit that aging is difficult. I have spent eight months on the job market even after earning my M.A. with Merit from an elite university. Would this be the case if I were 38? No. But how can I prove ageism and even if I could, would it matter? So I have gone from trying to understand what Hume meant in "Dialogues" to figuring out which outfits and hairstyles make me look most youthful. This is humiliating. Yet, what choice do I have? So it boggles my mind to think someone 20 years my senior is not just searching for a journalism or teaching job, but feels entitled to the Presidency.

Men in particular seem to think they can rule the world forever. I want a candidate who will improve the country and keep us safe, like Beto. I don't want a candidate who sniffs women's hair and relies on his years of service with an exceptional younger president to bolster his own CV. It won't fly for me, and it won't improve America.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons Images:

The Trump sexual assault allegations, and why we shouldn't brush them aside

In the days following Donald Trump's election, it's been disheartening to see newscasters and professional talkers of all stripes moderate their formerly passionate criticism of him. "Let's give him a chance!" "He's our president now, and we only have one president at a time!" "He's been acting very presidential since Tuesday. What a wonderfully gracious acceptance speech!" I think the person who deserves an award is President Obama for not pulling Trump's seat out from under him. That's not a metaphor. Women and girls are, every day, at tremendous risk in this world. Rape is not a fluke, but an everyday occurrence worldwide, nationwide, on college campuses, on dates. A woman my age whom I was close to

was date raped. I never talked to her about it, but when she passed away not longer after, I wondered how much it had haunted her. Then in 2005, I met someone at a bar in Brooklyn and only intended to have a drink with him. He told me he was a high school coach, and I figured I'd be done talking to him in time to get home early, but that didn't happen. I told my brother soon afterwards, "I don't know why I was with him." David wanted me to recount what had happened, and I said I'd been led to another bar, apparently, where we met some of his friends and I was given another drink. So I too was date raped. I was also fired after a boss had playfully tweaked my elbows and I'd snapped at him. I was fired the next day. And every day, men size us up and down. Or if they aren't sizing us up, they're chastising us for no longer being worthy of their leers. Donald Trump is going to make all of this OK. He is more than just the lecherous uncle with the wink. He's been accused by over a dozen women of forcing his godawful lips/tongue/what have you on to them. Professionals who were there to interview him or who happened to be sitting next to him on a plane. Women who cry and shake as they recount their ordeals. His response? None of it happened. Barbara Corcoran, whom I've interviewed three times and admire a great deal, said to CNN's Erin Burnett that Trump had commented on her breast size while she was pregnant. She was visiting him for a business meeting. How many women have had this experience in a business meeting? I haven't. If I had, I'd never forget it, and neither has Barbara. By the way, she was the Queen of New York Real Estate before she became a "shark" on Shark Tank. Donald Trump doesn't care who he demeans. He will continue his sick, entitled misogyny in the White House. Just wait for it. And the American people, especially the good men out there who know how to respect women, need to stand up and speak out! Thank you, protestors! I am only glad I don't have a young daughter right now because I honestly don't know how I'd shield her from this madman. Photos: (1) In front of Trump Tower on Fifth Ave., by Laurie Wiegler; (2) By Gage Skidmore - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/25858555481/in/photolist-Fp2RDt-Fy6H5M-Fv98Vo-Fv9cDq-Fv93Pm-EzwkLW-Ewrt8Y-Fp38FZ-Fp3pfp-Fp3aQZ-EzSAXr-F5SySC-F5SwYs-FmL3mA-FxrgZ2-F5Szpu-FmLj8f-EzSTvX-Fv9A5C-EzwuoW-F5SMpw-EzT9gZ-Fv9ses-EzwK3f-F5SHNU-F5SUh9-Fv9z5G-EzwsWC-F5T3bA-F5T13s-Fp47j8-Fv9ZGN-FmLEa9-Fp41GX-Fp3VVn-EzwQcy-Fp44za-FxrKjc-Fv9Xzb-Fp4a3p-FxrGdH-Fj2SF8-Fj8V78-FgRFs9-FqeYps-FqeUZG-EZYoPE-FswM6P-Fj9mUv-FswHCB, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47705735

Dealing with the reality of a President Trump ... sort of

Within 48 hours, I'd defriended at least six, maybe seven, "friends" on Facebook. This included two distant cousins. Someone I care a lot about, someone who lives far away from America and whom I admire, ticked me off no end and I almost blocked his Twitter access. I cried very briefly, but mainly, what I felt was rage. Donald Trump was going to be my president. No matter the hashtag that's trending, #notmypresident, Trump is on his way to becoming the 45th president of these united states. United States? Really? I knew when it happened that within hours, if not minutes, we'd see talking heads telling us how it won't be so bad, how Trump will behave himself, how he's got the calm and controlled Mike Pence at his side! Sure enough, when Big Orange T went a couple days "acting presidential" many in the media wanted to give him a big wet kiss. Not me. I was busy seeing my young African American protégée decrying the first election of her young lifetime, fearing for her socioeconomic future and even her physical well-being. She lashed out at whites. For after all, aren't we a cumulative "we", a part of the big neo-Nazi problem? Though she's had me in her life since she was turning 6, even though we'd been brought together and each learned that white isn't so white and black not so black, society was teaching her something else. Then there was the Puerto Rican housekeeper who told me how fearful she was, how all her friends were sick to their stomachs. There was the beautiful African American writer, a young friend of mine, posting poems on Instagram about her sadness. Then there was me. In my youth I was an 8, maybe even a 9! But now, a 5 at best. Ha! To even think this way is a sign that Donald J. Trump has gotten under the nation's cumulative skin. So I will not be one of those in the media who tells you that it will all be OK, that Trump the candidate is different than who he'll be as president. No. He is deeply unqualified to be Commander in Chief. He was barely qualified to run his own empire (see bankruptcies, and his pathological love for suing others), let alone sit in the Oval Office. I'm getting a little queasy as I write, even, thinking of that image. So no, I'm not going to say it will be all right, but I will say this: since the announcement of his presidency, I see the good guys coming together. I see the young protestors and old protestors speaking words some of us may be too scared to say or scream right now. Some of us hide behind Twitter or because of achy knees or sheer proximity -- there aren't as many protests in the 'burbs, after all -- we're not physically protesting. But millions are protesting silently, and we should continue to do so. We can support anything good that could possibly evolve or even devolve from the Trump presidency, whether it's fixing our nation's crumbling highways or supporting families and children. Surely, some of the people who will surround him (hardly all) may be positive influences. We have to believe. For remember, in life, nothing is all black or all white.

Photo: Donald Trump with his daughter Ivanka, Feb. 2016. Via Wikimedia Commons Images; By Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46940086