Is Republican the New Democrat?

To those of my readers and friends and relatives who live in Massachusetts: WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE? Ted Kennedy is groaning in his grave; his seat went to a Republican, tipping the balance sheet on the health care bill he championed, putting it effectively into the red.

Far better analysts than I are out there scribbling their perspectives on how this loss of a Senate seat to the Republicans in what is arguably the most Democratic state in the Union can be interpreted and what its consequences will be. But I would like to hear from those of you who live there: What happened?! Coakley ran an inadequate campaign, while Brown ran a flawless attack; that seems incontestable now. But why did she run an inadequate campaign? Are there not vigorous political minds at work in the Northeast who might have realized what was at stake here in the vote? Did Democrats not go out and vote? Was it too cold? Are you NUTS????

Please tell me. Because you know, I am writing letters to Russ Feingold, the utmost Democrat of Democrats, often the Lone Wolf of Democratic Conscience in the U.S. Senate, as he begins ten months of campaigning to claim his present seat in that challenged body for one more set of six years. He is faced with wealthy opposition in this race within a body politic that is more damaged and facing a crueler terrain to surmount than we have seen in many decades. So Massachusetts makes me worried. Losing Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold in one year, while Smarmy Joe Lieberman is still smirking from his concealed corner like Mad Ludwig II would do me in. Cynicism is out there waiting in the wings for the cue to take center stage. We must send her back to the dressing room, expeditiously, strip off her gowns and her cosmetics, expose her for the skeletal apparition she truly is.

Russ, it's time to step it up. Your jobs credit proposal: Get it going! The empty GMC plant in your hometown of Janesville: Get it going! Where are the public works projects we dared to think were going to begin: Get them going! Everywhere, recovery is stalling. Unless something starts moving, unless we see the machinery starting to produce again, November is going to be the cruelest month.

Only Here On the Street Where I Live

My friend Georgianne was down here this weekend, finishing a slumber party we began over 35 years ago up in my bedroom in Appleton, slugging down our first illegal beers, one each, enough to send us into giggles for the rest of the night. We are better drinkers now and haven't lost a bit of our giggling prowess either. This was Georgianne's first visit to my house in Madison, the first time she has been in any of the many cities and neighborhoods I've  called home. Over morning coffee before she left, she commented on how well I seemed to fit in this place I've now lived for over two years. "It seems like the perfect fit for you," she commented. I demurred, which means I protested but not too vehemently.

It's hard to protest living in Madison, Wisconsin unless you want to sound like a real jerk. Madison is a really nice place to live. There are good reasons it regularly makes it into the Top 10 of annual magazine lists, "Best Places to Live," "Best Place to Find A Job," "Best Educated City," "Best Place to Ride Bikes," "Best Place to Be a Dog," and "Definitely Best Place to Be a Lesbian." By and large, we're well-educated, stably employed, healthy and overly friendly in this town. To say you don't like to live here is like saying you like going to the dentist; it makes people look at you strangely and maybe even recoil a bit.

If there was any doubt about this in my mind, it disappeared today. Martin Luther King Day. I was out of town last night but got back mid-afternoon. As I drove back, I was listening to an amazing show on radio station WORT-FM dedicated to the jubilant music of Haiti and the resilient spirit of its  people. Then, as I turned onto a semi-commercial street in my neighborhood, I noticed a gaggle of school children waving large hand-lettered signs toward drivers like me. HELP HAITI! DONATE TO THE RED CROSS! I turned off the road and circled the block so I could drive by again, more slowly and with money ready. "Do you want a cookie?" the happy collector asked me as she clambered down from the roadside snow bank. "Perhaps you would eat one for me," I suggested. She seemed to think that was reasonable.

Turns out a bunch of neighborhood kids, out of school for the MLK holiday, had organized this on their own. They baked cookies to reward donors and spent the morning making signs out of old corrugated cardboard. A local hospital, St. Mary's, where one of their moms worked, had pledged to match what they collected as long as it wasn't more than $10,000. With my $10, they were well on their way to at least one percent of that, I'm sure. St. Mary's, btw, is doing this for Haitian donations raised by all their employees. Hooray for their generosity!

I finished the drive home. The Haitian music show was done, and the next show was a public affairs program on which the host was talking about how desperately low on food the survivors of the earthquake are, with relief efforts slowed by the destruction of the little nation's transportation infrastructure. Prices of any remaining food supplies in the metropolitan Port Au Prince area have predictably sky-rocketed. People are fighting over cans of soup. I would be doing the same if I were there. So would you. So would Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Robertson. Don't let them fool you. Don't let them fool your parents or your neighbors. Speak the truth on Haiti. It's Martin Luther King Day, and we have the honor and privilege of living in the United States of America where our waste is a bigger problem than our wants.

And those of us who live in Madison have it even better than most. Georgianne is a school teacher in a northern county. They don't even get to take this day as a holiday, and there are many districts like this, commemorating Columbus Day but not Martin Luther King Day. In at least one school district up in northwestern Wisconsin, they actually take off a day they call "Easter Monday," but not MLK Day.

Is there really an Easter Monday, for anyone?

Blessed Are the Merciful

Everyone who has a heart and soul feels pain for the people of Haiti this week.

This doesn't include Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh whom, it is now more clear than ever, have neither hearts nor souls.

This says it with more class and calm than I can muster on the subject of these two hateful men:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPoWOw8Jm5w&feature=youtube_gdata

The Sun Is Shining When It's Dismal

Went for a walk during my lunch break today, and there was this enormous mallard's head sticking out of frozen Lake Mendota behind Memorial Union about 60 feet out from the shore. This was as close as I dared get, and all I had in my bag was a cheap little camera, so it's not a very good picture, but you get the idea of what life is like out here at this time of year. Well, sort of. Actually, it isn't even this good. I doctored up the picture some already, adding a nuance of color, a suggestion of sunshine. There was neither, not an iota. This was one of those days that might serve to define "glum."

But for at least one duo, it will probably go down in their personal history as a bright and special day. Before coming upon the Mallard Head, aka Drowning Duck, I walked along the lakeshore path, seemingly the only person who thought the day befitting an outdoors stroll. Except for the couple up ahead, that is, and the increasingly loud and semi-hysterical laughter hiccoughing in escalating bursts from the woman of the pair. It was borderline annoying, to be there on this still and somber day with some maniacal racket jackhammering down the tree-lined path like a chainsaw. But as I got closer, it began to sound more like sobbing, out of control sobbing. My step quickened; my concern altered. By the time I was up to the couple, I was on full alert and ready to intervene.

And then I saw the ring box. He was holding out a wine colored ring box toward her, and she, her hand discreetly covering her open mouth, was careening wildly between sobs and giggles, guffaws and teary gasps. I recognized the condition immediately, since I am among the world's best at it: Emotional overload. Laughter, tears...at this point in emotional cognizance, there is no difference. I quickened my step again, apologetically, sorry to have blundered into what had been meant to be a personal moment, not a Personal Moment With Anxious Overseer.

Twenty paces on, I paused, though, remembering the camera in my bag. Slowly, I turned back. "You guys want a picture of this?" I called. They nodded, big grins whiter than the snow along the shoreline. They were startlingly young, younger than either of my own kids, I suspect, utterly fresh-faced and almost certainly more innocent. On her coat was pinned a button, I think you can see it in the photo, offering a hug to the world. I clicked twice and gave them my business card since they were too young to have one of their own. "Send me your email, and I'll send you the pictures," I promised. "Congratulations."

Glum. Ho hum. A day is only as bleak as you let it be, and so I have doctored up the Drowning Duck for you. Congratulations to everyone who triumphed today, including my friend Felicia who got a good treatment plan from a new doctor instead of the full hysterectomy that the first doc had recommended.

A La Mode, A La Midwest, et Moi

By now, if you've been reading any several of my posts here, you have probably concluded that I am quite the mean and heartless bitch. I mean, I not only lose my patience with my dying parents, I criticize them for their positions on Medicare and national healthcare. I criticize my sisters for having too much money. In fact, as my kids are always criticizing me, I criticize nearly everyone, including myself. And this all despite the fact that one of my sloppier New Year's resolutions was to become a nicer, better person, urged on by my co-worker Bethany who does, after all, spend more waking hours with me than anyone else on the planet right now.

Today, I confess that not only is all the above true and not only am I largely unrepentant about the above (except for the making of sloppy, unkeepable, hopelessly imprecise resolutions), I am actually considering becoming even more heartless and for the most shallow of reasons: Fashion. You see, I made the mistake of watching TV last night, genuine network TV. I'd worked hard all day, then come home and worked hard for several more hours on domestic duties.  After throwing in a load of laundry in the utility room adjoining the so-called Bonus Room where my largely defunct television set lives, I idly clicked on the remote as I waited to see if the water lines to the washer were frozen, as happens here in Wisconsin. Amazingly, the erratic TV worked and so did the water, and I ended up plunking myself down in front of random network TV shows for the first time in many years, and now I'm a changed woman, it seems. Suddenly, I have a deep, almost primordial craving for a really expensive, probably custom-fit suit, a woman's suit, one that both Katie Couric and Sarah Palin might notice with some amount of envy. I would even buy nylons to wear with it, I've been thinking. Some new high heels.

Perhaps it was yesterday's blog that made me vulnerable, thinking about Sarah and Katie facing off on network TV, but it was a mean woman executive with extremely interesting eyebrows on some show that had "Ted" in the title who really made me crave sartorial splendor. Her suit was gorgeous. Absolutely perfect. And it would have looked stunning on me. Or maybe it's just that I'm sort of involved with a man who abhors skirts. I don't mean "skirts" as a euphemism of sorts for "women"--I mean he genuinely dislikes, really can't abide, skirts. Who says there is nothing new under the sun? The first time he confessed this, I really thought he was kidding. I mean, if I had strangely shaped legs I would undoubtedly have believed him and blanched and gone running home, but I am a runner, and my legs are GOOD! My next thought was that he was psychotic. I'm still debating this possibility.

Maybe I've been living here too long, in this Midwestern city where fashion is the disrespected consort of comfort and comfort is the abject slave to climate. Don't have a belt that goes with those shoes? Here: Wear a fanny pack! Don't have enough pockets in those elasticized pants? Again, the fanny pack! In any other city in the country, I would be considered a slob without the least sense of clothing based on what I wear. Here, I could be strutting down runways...if they were only clear of ice and snow and the damned infernal salt that is now ruining all my footwear.

The suit this mean executive wore on the unknown TV show last night was so absolutely lovely I think I might leave academia and go into private business if lured by a closet full of such perfectly tailored skirts and jackets. I might even start driving a car to work so my shoes wouldn't get caked with salt. I might get my hair done professionally instead of snipping at the ends in front of my bathroom mirror, or at least start blow-drying it, since I wouldn't have to cram it into a hat or, worse, a bike helmet. Maybe I might experiment with lipstick, maybe inject a little botox...

Or maybe I'll just turn off the TV again, slip into the polyester-perverse Snuggie my Dad just gave me "because it seemed just perfect for you," and go back to reading Destiny Disrupted, an engrossing history of Islam. I am a Wisconsin woman, I'm afraid. Hand me that fanny pack, please; my Burt's Bees lip balm is in it.

Knock Knocking on Heaven's Door: Anyone Home?

I lost it this weekend, my patience, that is, and not only did I lose it, I lost it with Old People, Really Old People, People on Death's Doorstep Old People: my parents. I am not bragging; I think, though I wasn't raised to use a confessional, I may even be admitting my moral smallness. Why I would do this in a blog addressed to Senator Feingold may be hard to figure out, but perhaps there is some political value to my confession, as I can't help but think I'm not alone in this experience I'm having.

Like almost all my age peers, those of us euphemistically labelled the Sandwich Generation, which I think sites us like bologna between the young and the old "bread slices,' I am getting a close-up and in-depth introduction to the pleasures of dying, American style by taking care of my elderly parents. Like so much else in our Puritanically inspired national culture, death a la Protestant is primarily negative in emphasis, as in, "Not Me." No one gets to die easily here. At the fittingly named Ronald Reagan/UCLA Medical Center in California, the chief executive recently told the New York Times (12/23/09), “If you come into this hospital, we’re not going to let you die.”  It's no wonder our health care costs have rocketed sky high. Heaven might be empty if not for the upward arch of our health care costs.

OK. I'm being a little unfair, but not grossly. Health care costs actually came down a smidgen recently for the first time in many months, though that may have been a simple consequence of the fact that the entire nation was so icy no one made it to their appointments so no one had any unnecessary testing or labwork done. My parents, however, have the last incredible doctor in the U.S. who is really the kindest doctor I can imagine and whom I would mention by name if I didn't think I'd embarrass Jack Anderson. He, a one-time high school classmate of mine, actually sends lab techs and specialists to my parents' house to do their work-ups in their condo. Well, it may be a little self-preservation on his part, combined with kindness; he may be justifiably concerned about meeting my parents' gold Buick head-on on the roadways they share since I spoke with him regarding observations of my dad's increasingly inattentive driving. In any case, Jack sends the clinic to my folks now, and I love him for that. And now you know about that gold Buick sedan, too, so don't say I didn't warn you! In fact, as a general policy, I think it's pretty wise to use extra caution any time you see any color Buick LeSabre on the road. It's a pretty safe bet the driver is a minimum of 75, with critically lengthened reaction time. Either that, or it's the teenager who just inherited Grandma's old car when she went into the nursing home. And with that, we're back to my losing patience with my own parents, who are not quite yet in a nursing home.

My parents are both still at home, largely because of the kindness of people like Jack and their seemingly endless legion of friends, as well as their limited cadre of daughters, all four of us. This last weekend was one of my times to be with them, to do some of the household chores that accumulate each week in both my house and theirs, to cook some meals that are nutritious in sufficiently ample quantities that leftovers can easily be reheated over the coming week, to spare them a few of the chores that are so easy for me and so painstakingly difficult or time consuming for them. And, almost inevitably, during this visit as in nearly every visit, there's some point at which the old tensions of our longstanding relationship snap like a too-tight guitar string. That would be my patience popping.

This time it was Medicare. My parents, as I've mentioned before, are major recipients of Medicare. Even if the only thing Medicare paid for was their list of prescription drugs, they would be major beneficiaries. I mean, just one of my mom's prescriptions, a little pill called Rilutek she takes twice every day without fail, would cost someone like me about $1,000/month, if purchased from an online discounter. My parents must visit a medical professional of some specialty at least once a week, and this doesn't even include the "fringe" medical care people, like the OTs and PTs and home care providers. Medicare pays almost every single medical expense they incur. But this weekend, among my other duties, I was charged with telling my parents that changes in Medicare coverage were going to necessitate they fulfill a 20% co-pay on a state-of-the-art communication device my mom needs to use as her ability to speak disappears, a percentage which will amount to around $3,200. Do the math, and you'll realize that this is one expensive piece of equipment we're talking about here!

My parents, of course, were dismayed. Aghast might be a better word, for at least one of them. And it is not that they can't afford the three grand, but that they feel entitled to Medicare. After all, it's been paying for everything. Why should it tighten up the purse strings now, they want to know, just when it looks like everyone else in the nation is about to get health care due to what they regard as the devious machinations of President Obama and that nasty Nancy person ("You know, the one who wears all the pearls"). That's when I lost it. I lost it, and I ended up raising my voice and effectively calling them selfish and greedy people, "Republicans," I believe I called them in the extreme vexation of the moment.

We have so much. Even when we trim our budgets, we have so much. I have a sister who complains of living in straitened circumstance. They have an ocean-going sailboat moored  two blocks from their front door on the Massachusetts coastline. I have another sister who has ceased giving Christmas presents because the downtown office building she owns is causing financial stress in her life. How dare we complain. How dare we begrudge others some of what we have in such abundance. How dare we write our Congressional representatives that while we understand the need to trim the national budget, it's not right to trim the part that affects, yes, us.

I lost my patience. Then, Protestant as we are, we agreed not to talk about it any more. It all made me so relieved to drive home, even through the blinding, blowing snowfields. As Pete, another high school friend, commented ruefully after listening to me vent today,  "I had forgotten how emotionally draining it is to be a caregiver." Pete nursed his mom through her last years of Alzheimers. For all I know, Russ Feingold may be experiencing some of these same feelings. He's part of the Sandwich Generation, too, I believe.

I do know that I for one am really spread thin. And I think maybe, just maybe, we don't have a responsibility to keep everyone alive who enters the doors of the hospital.

Successful Networking: What To Wear for the Cameras

If I was into numerology, I would probably have some explanation for why this date might be special: 01-11-10. I mean, it's a palindrome. There absolutely has to be something numerically significant about that! I mean, something more than Fox TV's announcement about the Palin Drone's new broadcasting job with them. Sarah Palin. The same backward as forward. Is that sort of like being two-faced?


It makes me feel even better about not having cable television. In my new nightmare, Katie Couric and Sarah Palin are staring grimly at each other from opposite sides of the same round table, their legs under the table flashing back and forth, back and forth, crossing and recrossing with every point they deem scored. The wager? Whoever loses the debate of the day's events, judged by viewer ratings, has to give up skirts and don pantsuits for posterity.


Hillary, meanwhile, is jetting over the ocean again, on her way to the first of a series of speeches, focusing on the Asia-Pacific multilateral command in the Pacific.

Don't Know How Lucky You Are, Boyz

Out for dinner last night with my good friend David trying to get my blood moving with some spicy Vietnamese food at the Ha Long Bay Cafe before heading home to write the previous entry about Russia. Much of the fuel for that entry came from our dinner conversation, so here is a follow-up straight from David, because I still can't tell a joke. Well, not exactly straight from David--I also can't help but embellish just a little...

A train was heading east across Russia from Moscow. In one car, obviously private, sat four men, Vlad, Joe, Mikhail and Vlad Jr., none of whom confessed to ever reading Trotsky. For most of the long journey, they hardly spoke to each other, finding historic precedent to be sufficiently telling. Besides, everyone but Vlad the Younger was so old they dozed throughout most of the journey.

Then, with an horrendous screeching of metal on metal, the train screamed to a sudden stop. Everyone awoke. A conductor poked his head into the car. "Tracks ended," he shrugged. "We're stopped." And before anyone could question or incarcerate him, he was off. In Russia, no one lingers for the next round of questions.

The four leaders stared from under eight heavily knit brows at the end of the trail, the swirling snowy emptiness of the Siberian landscape all around. Lenin spoke first. "We'll have to appeal to the revolutionary zeal of the masses to come finish this track across the rest of Siberia." Stalin gave him a sharp shove back into his seat. "Not while I'm on this train!" he scowled. "We'll round up the enemies of the state and force them to lay the tracks. That way we don't need to supply coats!" Gorbachev, meanwhile, had called for a tray full of vodka and now motioned Stalin into a seat before directing the steward to pass out shots all round. "Is unnecessary to force anyone to do it," he counseled solemnly. "We'll form a committee and formulate a 10-year-plan that will include not only train tracks but roadside stations and world class restaurants." Young Vlad Putin, meanwhile, was ignoring all of them and calmly pulling closed the old velvet curtains across the train car's dirty windows. "Nonsense," he reprimanded them in an low voice that made all the old leaders strain to hear him--how he loved making people strain to understand him. "We don't need to do anything at all. We just close the curtains, sit back, and pretend we're moving forward."

Wisconsin's motto is "Forward." We were the birthplace of the Progressive Party and we are now the home state of Russ Feingold. Click on the link and check out how he's entered on the NYT chart of major events in the last decade. Yes. Open the curtains and look at what's happening out there. We need trains.  We need genuine forward momentum. We need Russ. This is not Russia, after all.

Notes from the Functional Tundra

Lately, I've been feeling a lot like I live in Russia. For one thing, in the years I was gone from the state, something happened here: People started wearing fur lined caps with ear flaps and permanently pinned up brims which I'm certain have long been de rigeur and all the rage, well, at least some of the rage, on the streets of Moscow, not to mention the steppes of Siberia. This haberdashic fashion might be sufficient to raise my geographic concern, but when they're coupled with the frigid temperatures, the shock-unabsorbable potholes of our urban roadways, and the overwhelming morass of the civil service to which I've been exposed now, I am pretty certain I live in Russia.

My new friend GL, who was born and schooled in Moscow, laughs at the notion. "You know how you can tell you're not in Russia," he chides me, rolling thick Russian consonants like river steamers down the Volga as we gulp down tofu chunks and apple juice in a way appropriate to recently liberated Muscovites. "You're not in jail for saying that." With that, we clink our juice glasses and toss another shot of AJ down our gullets. But really, it feels a lot like Russia here in the American midwest these days. Not only are faces hidden under fur brimmed Ushankas, young women are wearing down coats to work, long and puffy and white usually, like enormous marshmallows, as if function has overcome fashion, as if everything Marx wrote about the dialectic of change has really come true here in the heartland of America. Quantity transforms to quality, function to fashion. You can no longer see the truth of any person. Faces and forms are uniformly obscured. Being warm is everything. Soon we will all be wearing thermal longjohns under our trousers and not caring if the stretched out and vaguely graying cuffs show when we cross our legs, leaning back from the conference table. Next thing you know we'll start smoking again. Waking up in the morning and asking for Wodka.

Don't get me wrong. I am one-quarter almost-Russian. Well, occupied Russian. My grandmother came from Lithuania. Maybe that's my problem. You see, my grandmother despised Russians. She would speak nothing but German just to spite Russians. Me, I just don't like it when people wear animal skins around their faces. I don't care what kind of fur it is, don't even care if it's fake fur. In a different but somehow related way, which came up today at work, I don't like it when I see that the practices of state employees who are protected by both trade unions and the civil service result in mediocre work being done in an indifferent fashion by people whose only genuine interest in their work is its retirement plan. Is it only me who thinks that it's absolutely insane to work a job you abhor just in order to retire? I mean, why not do something you like so you don't focus on retiring, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen almost exactly at the same time you become so old you're incapable of really enjoying it? We're back to Marx here: alienated labor. Work is something wonderful. Labor is... well, if you've ever had a baby, you know what labor is.

But it's cold here. It's so very cold. I'm going to go crawl under my stack of heavy wool blankets that Dr. Zorba Paster on NPR's "On Your Health" broadcast has told me at least twice are probably responsible for my inability to sleep through the night. "Try sleeping with lighter weight blankets," he urges his caller with such assurance. I'll stick with the amazingly warm Hudson Bay blankets my friend Ann donated to my freezing bedroom. I'll go dream about people tying the skins of dead animals around their ruddy cheeks and chortling as they trudge through the big open square in front of the Kremlin with the snow falling all round and a steamer whistle blowing in the distance, as Putin watches from a second floor window.

My friend GL is probably right.

The Little Geothermal Engine That Could

Right now it's sixteen degrees Fahrenheit here in Madison, Wisconsin. Temperatures tonight are expected to fall to somewhere around the original double digit, by which I mean not 10, but TWO. Windchills, which do matter, will take us to subzero levels I would sooner not dignify by naming.

This is a cold and barren place. Color has fled. The flowers, leaves, and most of the pretty birds are gone, and the skies are almost always white. It's amazing to me that kindergartners here persist in coloring the sky as the same skinny strip of blue across the top of the page as children who live in more temperate climes. Just goes to show you that optimism has not disappeared utterly from our planet; we still think of sky as being blue.

I went for a run yesterday, when it was even colder than today. My neighbor, out chiseling ice from her driveway, called out to me, "You're crazy!" This was from someone who has lived here, voluntarily and largely without protest, for forty-some years. At least I was moving fast and in a manner that wasn't damaging my spinal column. Craziness is relative, and endemic among my relatives.

I often wonder on days like this just why I came back to Wisconsin. I am not a hardy soul. I like sunshine and beaches and even that recently derided accompaniment to these preferred circumstances: the suntan. I will not be so stupid as to say if I die of melanoma I will at least die tan, but I can't say I haven't thought this. Right now, I am sadly observing how faint the lines from my swimsuit straps have become on my winter-paled shoulders. I have invested heavily in bottles of Vitamin D3, hoping to ward off seasonal depression. I'm unsure how well it's working. When I spoke this afternoon with a colleague who is spending her winter break in summery Argentina, I'm afraid I was borderline rude when she asked if there was anything besides sunshine she might bring me when she returns next week. "There is nothing that matters besides sunshine," I believe I snapped, icily.

Behind me, below the big windows of my office, Lake Mendota is freezing. It's lost its deep blue color, too, and is gradually turning solidly pale and white. You will know it is frozen the second the first ice shanty appears. Somehow ice anglers know the precise instant water becomes a solid. It is not their scientific training; it is far more precise than any science and less mathematical. On the other lake, the one behind my house, the anglers are already living in their winter community. A whole shantytown is out on the bays of Lake Monona. You would almost think Wisconsin winters are something we welcome around here. This, however, would be erroneous for most of us with IQs above 120. "Well, it could be worse," my boss commented with inexplicable gaiety today, "We could be in International Falls." I wonder what they say up in Barrows, Alaska. Maybe they just take sufficient consolation in their distance from Sarah Palin's Anchorage that they've become unflappable.

And what does any of this have to do with Senator Russ Feingold? Well, first let me clarify. Frankly, I believe that everything concerns Senator Russ Feingold. I believe that if the Senior Senator from the Good Progressive State of Wisconsin had as much time as he wanted, he would probably even care that my dishwasher is broken and that I don't know how to fix it or even if I care to try. Russ would like me to be happy here. He likes this state and would like me (and you) to like it here, too. To be able to live here comfortably. And so the problem of this state's frigid temperatures is something we need to address here.

We need geothermal energy installations that bring heat to our walkways and public spaces. We need bus shelters in which we can stand to stand and wait for buses that are stalled behind cars whose tires are spinning without propulsion on the sheets of ice that we euphemistically call streets. We need sidewalks that we can walk down, even run down, without considering first whether our health insurance deductible is so high that a broken or twisted ankle is financially untenable. Geothermal heat can give us all of these, an investment that makes sense both to those who lament and protest global warming as well as to the idiots who say our recent cold snap disproves global warming.

Really, what has happened to all the big public works projects that were supposed to start up as part of our national recession recovery efforts? The New Deal, in anemic modern form as originally proposed, seems to have become, with inaction, the New Deal, Anorexic Form. We need high speed trains and we need geothermally heated sidewalks and bus shelters. We are cold and many of us are unemployed. And those of us who are not unemployed are getting really really sick of having people with pinched faces tell us with inexplicable spite, "You should just be glad you have a job." It's as bad as being a kid at the dinner table again, hearing about kids starving in distant parts of the world. Me, I'm nearly to the point where I may just start replying, "And you should be lucky you have a mother. Otherwise no one might love you."

Russ, we need jobs. We need to start building all the projects pledged by the recovery plans. Things need to move. Governor Doyle submitted the proposal for the high speed trains; things need to stay in motion on this. I mean, remember in the flurry of national security reorganization that commenced after 9/11? All the agencies involved in identifying potent national enemies with the intention to wreak mass destruction of our citizens were going to be newly coordinated and their communication network strengthened and improved. This Christmas a man with a mission whose own FATHER had tried to alert the authorities nearly managed to set fire to another aircraft. We need to keep pushing for the recovery work projects to move forward. We want tracks laid. We want safe, fast, warm transportation that is energy efficient and puts people back to work on projects that make all of us happy.

Oh yeh. The child optimistic enough to color the sky blue all winter? I was one of them.

Driving to Milwaukee Via I-94E

Drove in to Milwaukee yesterday, on the second-last day of the Andy Warhol exhibit. Roads were clear of snow and deer, nothing but salt swirls and speed traps to slow down my 2000 Civic. My fellow Madisonian and UW alumnus Michael Feldman was on the radio. WPR. The Ideas Network. Made me regret just a little that I'd sent all my year-end dollars to Planned Parenthood (see previous post). But then, at least I'm a member. Public radio already gets my support at least once every year.

Driving a car is not good for the planet. I mean, petroleum-wise, it beats flying, but that's about all you can say for it except that it's not a bus. Now don't get me wrong: I take the bus to and from work five days every week. I have the good luck (having had the foresight) to live right on three major bus lines. That sounds like a bad place to live, but it's a lovely tree-arched street lined with charming and squalid tall Victorians. Houses, I mean, not the one-time Queen's descendants. But buses, no matter how plush or clean they may be, the stately Van Galder coaches a prime example, are still, well, buses. We really need trains. Nice, high speed trains. With real conductors. And maybe some porters. It's all about jobs, right? And these buses need to originate in Madison, not Columbus. What's with Columbus, anyway? There is so little in Columbus other than the Amtrak station that they actually invested in a Christopher Columbus museum and put a sign out on the main highway that skirts the periphery of town as if passing motorists keen on arriving elsewhere will see the sign and say, "Hey, Hon! Look at that! The Christopher Columbus Museum is here! Wanna stop?" Even though Christopher Columbus didn't come within 1245 nautical miles of Columbus (and that only if the nautical vessel could somehow fly as the crow does, in summer months).

But anyway, I'm driving to Milwaukee on highways so good and clear of traffic on a Saturday morning that I really do need to watch out for the squad cars parked at unlikely angles at unpredictable intervals throughout revenue-hungry, action-hungry Jefferson County. I think the police officers of this county got together at some point and brainstormed appropriate police response to their twofold environmental dilemmas: 1) there's really nothing happening in Jefferson County to warrant police forces or pay for new squad cars and 2) the interstate that passes through the county like the mainline artery taking intellect and money everywhere but the county coffers is almost always shrouded in a pea soup of fog. The answer was double genius. Plant squad cars all along the interstate. The fog will keep motorists from seeing them; the resultant speeding tickets (my son's was nearly $300 two years ago) will pay for nice new squad cars.

Driving from Madison to the Milwaukee Art Museum ("Oh please. Just call me 'MAM.'") is my idea of a really good drive, especially if it's not foggy. Basically, it involves getting on Interstate 94 and driving east until the interstate ends at Lake Michigan, where you park the car and walk into the Calatrava addition to the MAM. As someone with a classically inverted sense of direction, this in itself is sufficient reason for me to buy an annual membership to the MAM. In fact, I buy a double. I am always on the lookout for a good deal, and the double allows me to always bring a friend and seem generous, where in fact I am stingy and just looking for the best deal. Yesterday, for example, I had every intention of bringing my friend Gail, until her husband claimed her, something about remodelling the bathroom. Since the remodel involves a deep soaking tub, I had to relent. Some things can vie with art, and a good bathtub may be one of them.

Oh. Perhaps you've been noticing the occasional red-inked words. These are for Russ and his crew. These represent his voters. I think it's important for him to know how many of my readers are his electors. I may seem to be a loose and wandering intellect, but so are my circles of friends and readers. And a lot of them are wandering around Wisconsin right now. Freezing, but wandering. The smarter ones, of course, like me, are seated in front of their computers, roaming through the sunny fields of intellect, which are looking to me this morning much more like summertime in Provence than the frozen tundra outside the window of my study.

Hmmm. I was going to write about the incredible crowds at the MAM yesterday. I was lucky enough to get there before noon and see the Warhol with only a few tense episodes of elbow-jamming. By the time I wandered back to the stunning spaces of the entryway in search of food, the lines were winding like a snake or a bank run through the foyer, and a peek into the galleries where the Warhol works are hung revealed a packed house, where no one under 6'4" was going to see anything but shoulder blades.

But I'll have to write about the amazing hunger for art in the souls of the wintry housebound another time. My BFF's on the way over for breakfast, and I'm still in my bathrobe and house slippers.

Happy New Year from Russ to Us!

Just hours after posting my very first "Letter to Russ," I got an e-mail from him, a wish for a happy and safe new year, plus an acknowledgement of having reached his campaign's final fundraising goal for the calendar year just ended. Perhaps you got it, too.

With all due respect for the strange workings of synchronicity aside, I was not much moved. I don't think well wishing and fundraising go well together. It's sort of like wearing black shoes with a brown belt or maybe even a burkah offset with a Star of David pendant. One just shouldn't mix certain things, like warm wishes for the new year and cold talk about money. Unless of course you're sending good money, along with good wishes, as my favorite old aunts used to do, "Don't forget the Lord loves you even more than we do," scrawled in red felt-tip pen on a sawbuck inside a greeting card adorned with winged and naked cherubs.


My son, ably schooled and intently interested in the machinations of political campaign work, tells me that one thing Obama's successful campaign proved last fall was that electors (you and I and the bozos down the street, too) will eventually donate money if hit up often enough. Russ's campaign is apparently taking this to heart. In the last week, I have received almost daily entreaties to contribute, some of them the identical copy, sent from different e-mail addresses. I have to think that if the Obama campaign proved that sympathizers eventually succumb to repeated requests like this, they failed to include a significant demographic group in their survey efforts, people like me: The Inexorably Principled.

Because, as you probably know, the Feingold campaign is not exactly the only group that was vying for your end-of-year loose change. I turned on the radio and my beloved Public Radio broadcasters were making the case for my last dollars (what dollars?). I brought in the mail and my beloved Planned Parenthood's fearless Cecile Richards was there in an envelope with another polite reminder that I hadn't yet sent in my usual year-end dollars (what dollars?!) And the ALS Society, which provides the most incredible support services to my beloved mom without ever requesting payment, greeted me when I opened my e-mail, wondering whether I'd prefer to charge this year's final donation of dollars (what dollars?!!).

Frankly, Russ, you didn't stand a chance this year in the queue for the crumpled up bills that I rummaged from the inky bottom of my messenger bag. But I'll be there when you really need me, just like I'm there for Planned Parenthood right now. They're going to have a heck of a fight ahead of them this year now that the religious right has wormed its insidious way back into the rotten apple of state's rights via the health care proposal, at stake once again women's ability to control our reproductive destiny. This is the front line, and Planned Parenthood will be there on my behalf.

And one more note, Russ. On that same mailing, when you wished me a happy and safe New Year? That word "safe." It reminds me of planes and missed screenings of noted high risk travellers, made me think of Detroit and then Manhattan and the towers and all the ways the last administration preyed and prayed upon our fearfulness. Wish me happiness, wish me prosperity, wish me good health and good skiing and good research. Wish me a meaningful, courageous, and creative New Year filled with good friends and good work...And I'll wish the same for you and even help you get there.

Happy New Year

Went to see "Up in the Air" with my oldest BFF today, meaning my longest enduring BFF in the whole wide world, one of the few people I speak to regularly who knows that I was not always a skinny and somewhat awkward blonde with a good fashion sense: I used to have no fashion sense. Who says nothing changes?

New Year's Eve. One tends to think about changes. Even "Up in the Air," a very mediocre movie with a very un-mediocre leading man (what is not to adore about George Clooney? His crinkly, smiling eyes?) leads one to think about change on the last day of an eventful year such as this. And this is without mentioning the Big Change, Mr. Change, Mr. President, Obama.

"There is nothing constant in the universe. All ebb and flow and every shape that's born bears in its womb the seeds of change." Ovid. I still don't know if Ovid was a person or, like Aesop or God, a sort of personification of a narrative compendium, but I still like that quote. I think it was the first quote I memorized, aside from the roughly 532 Bible verses I had to recite on Sunday mornings all the way through eighth grade confirmation class. "To every thing (turn turn turn) there is a season (turn turn turn) and a time for every purpose under" the Democrats, including national health care now.

Another year. The Byrds and the Bible are still sparring in my babyboomer brain. I am as up in the air as ever regarding love. I am as up in the air as ever regarding commitment. I am as up in the air as ever, a drifting red balloon knock knock knocking on Heaven's door as my Mom dies and my optimism seems less and less warranted and more and more essential. Medicare is paying all her very outrageous medical costs, and yet neither she nor my dad support national health care. Go figure. I am not up in the air about being a Democrat, about thinking government should take care of the people of the nation.

Happy new year, Russ. I hope it's a good one for all of us. I'm looking forward to sharing the confusion and the clarity with you and everyone else around here.