Monday, February 9, 2009

Shhh! Obama's first press conference

He looks good. Red tie. White shirt. Wedding ring. Wristwatch. Perfect teeth. And - did you know? - you've read it here for the first time - he wears a bracelet on his right hand. Need we say, How cool!

Tho I'm not learning anything new in his press conference with those perfect teeth of his, I hear him say like a wise Father-next-door, "Bad teachers should be fired. We should experiment with charter schools." He is aghast at our country's archaic and inefficient school system.

Ada in our group teaches developmentally disabled pre-schoolers to speak clearly. Carolyn teaches inner-city Philadelphia school-kids the beauties of nature at Peace Valley Nature Center in Chalfont. My future daughter-in-law teaches fourth-graders in the slums of Kensington how to think, reason, and love themselves. Tiffany in our group tutors children in math and reading. Their parents are incarcerated.

There's so much to do here in America. "Together we can clean up America and make her whole again."

I eat licorice for dessert. I am invited again to Helene's to partake of a fabulous meal: borscht, far from the Belt, featuring beef and cabbage and beets. I put sour cream in mine. When we are finished, I sit with her husband Aaron at the dining room table. The bright full moon shines outside over the leafless woods beside her house. The phone rings and who should it be but Our Marcy! From my seat in the dining room and Helene's in the kitchen, the three of us talk as I call in hello's in this participatory democratic phone call.

While Helene asks Marcy about her family - Philadelphia-bred, but transplanted one by one to the flatlands of suburban Los Angeles - I sit back in my chair sipping on my hot water and feeling unutterably content. Perhaps I am a short story character in someone's book. All I ask is a nice piece of lemon cake to go with my hot water. I'll clean up the crumbs and help with the dishes.

Thanks to Peter for listing this blogspot on his own. Peter, you're a terrific writer. It's easy to enter your mental abode thru your words. And what a lot of fans you have! Hope you're getting out each day which we spoke about. I'm stuffed into my house all day long, vacuum sealed, and it takes a great thwunk to get me out. Or promise of a great meal.

And Pete - I love when you ruminate out loud. I haven't the nerve to post my similar ruminations. I write em out and then delete before publishing. All my internal musings are enclosed within about twenty different diaries scattered throughout various rooms in my house. Once I'd write the entries, I never read them back. I only wrote when I was depressed or in love. Those days are happily gone. One is almost as bad as tother.