Washington

I always said the best entertainment on television are the live broadcasts from the Senate and House of Representatives sessions. I find them funny how they are trying to show the American people that they are the ones who know what is good for us. C-Span stations are the ones who show daily these sessions without any interruption. I don't deny it, I like watching it.

I made an interesting observation while watching. Clicking on the program mode on my remote a short description of each current program comes up. In the case of the Senate and House also there are some generic descriptions, however...

Every day these institutions are in sessions the description notes it as Episode XX (XX denotes the Episode number). Now, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and other tv comedies are tagged as Episodes. This proves my opinion about these institutions that they are nothing more than circuses and their sessions are just plain comedies.

TV show episodes survive on sponsor financing. I wonder how these governmental episodes survive, who is sponsoring them? Oh, I forgot, me the taxpayer. Then maybe there should be announcement at certain intervals saying that the next segment of this episode is being brought to you by the good taxpaying people of this great country!   

Travel

In the middle of all these Eastern European problems, my wife decided to travel to Hungary. She had a few legitimate reasons. One, her mother is in poor shape, and she wanted to see her before a new pandemic breaks out and makes travel impossible. That is a good, strong reason to go. Then her godson, her sister's son is graduating from high school and the two have a strong relationship therefore she wanted to be there. 

Because that idiot country has no airline, it had to be shut down due to mishandling its finances, traveling to Budapest is a little more complicated. LOT, the Polish airline is the one offering the most reasonable fares and easiest connections. So, that was the route she chose to take. As far as I know, the trip was uneventful, and she got there with no problems. Now, hopefully she is having a good time with her family and tasting good food.

I stayed behind to babysit Abigail and Robin even though as far as my schedule is concerned, I could have gone with her. It seems that now there are no (for a time) Covid-19 restrictions. They were not asking for proof of vaccines either at the airports or at the destination point as they used to, and no masks on the planes. I will hear all the travel stories when she returns. The only thing I know that the flight from New York To Warsaw, the transfer point, was totally full. 

People complain that things are getting expensive yet, the planes are full. So, what do we believe?

Commies

Good old Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, later known as Lenin and Stalin started their revolutionary career standing on the backs of trucks or whatever makeshift podium was erected back then and riling up the working class against the evil of riches and haranguing the beauty of proletarian rule. We all know what happened afterwards. They won and created a les than utopian workers' paradise.

Right now we have two upstart communist/socialist politicians who probably have a similar goal in their sights. Bernie Sanders the US senator from Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez US representative from Bronx,  New York are these two people. I am sure there are more with similar views but these two are the most vocal.

Bernie Sanders foams at the mouth when he talks about the wealthy. Tax them, take their money away, cut their wings. Ocasio-Cortez pretty much advocates the same cliche. What the two must understand that in this country of private enterprises, businesses are owned by the wealthy and thus provide employment to the non-wealthy. There are no businesses employing 100 or more people that are owned by poor people. We know that nationalizing businesses will result in a chaos. We saw that happening.

In those businesses productivity goes down, quality suffers and eventually they all fail. To be wealthy because business is doing good is not a crime as Sanders and co. is trying to present it. Amazon was one man's creation. Other people could have thought of it but did not. Bezos did and became extremely wealthy. They are employing 950,000 or more people in the US and over 1,600,000 people worldwide. That is a lot of employees.

Now, if one has a lot of money, he buys expensive things. It is normal. Good old Bernie makes it appear it is a sin. He or they preach to take it away from the super wealthy and give it to the poor. I am sure the super wealthy support more charities than anybody else. I wonder how many Bernie supports.

Ukraine

It seems to me that the sympathy towards the Ukrainians is waning. Aside from the terrible damages the war is causing both in human lives as well as material values the war appears to be very political. Actually, every war is political. But in this case one can not decide who is igniting the fire. England and the US are loud voices in their support for Ukraine. It is very easy for them. They are far away from this conflict, off the European continent. It is like a street fight and people from the third floor ara urging the parties to continue fighting.

An American media person said that if the US wants peace, why do they continue supplying the Ukrainians with weapons. I agree with her. I know that Russia is not the most US friendly country, but this fiasco will throw the relationship back to the darkest days of the Stalin era. Is that what they want? Zelensky is not concerned about creating a huge international tragedy, like a world war. He is so stuck on power that he wants to drag every country in without considering the consequences. He is asking for NATO membership, no-fly zone, more weapons and foreign troops. None of these will appease Russia. It will just extend the bad situation. 

Russia is a big country which should not be ignored. Biden's childish acts about sanctions will not have its expected results. Putin does not take Biden seriously. I don't even think he would take his calls. This man has absolutely no respect as a world leader.

I spoke to a lot of people recently and their opinion is that the devastation shown on tv are manufactured or created by the Ukrainians themselves to gather world sympathy. As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words". I know what the Russians are capable of doing but...

I earlier expressed my feelings and opinion about Ukraine and the Ukrainians. No matter how hard I try I can not feel much sympathy towards them. This is a perfect example of "what goes around, comes around".  

Older

We are living in very exciting times. I came to the conclusion that being old(er) is a very unique thing. For one, life is not boring as the younger generation believes it. For us life is full of surprises and unexpected events. At every corner something new is waiting for us. Every day brings new joys and new things. And all these put together should bring smiles to our faces. So why are we not smiling?

Because one of the surprises that starts off the day is that we woke up in the morning. That means we are part of the woke generation! Not the woke the media is occupied with but the woke up generation. At our advanced age just waking up in the morning is a surprise. Another surprise if we remember what we did the day before. As the day progresses there are more surprises are awaiting us. Like remembering our spouses' names and remembering all our grandchildren's names. Evening might hold the biggest surprise when we have to remember what we ate for breakfast.

The new things we are frequently encountering the aches and pains. At every move we are making another part of our bodies are responding to in a negative manner. Pains in places we never knew existed. Movements we made million times in our lifespan are suddenly become a hassle. And unfortunately, these do not go away. If money could accumulate as much as our aches do it would be good.

So, every day I am anxious to see what surprises are in store for me. What used to be able to do things are not readily possible. That is why we are living in exciting times. Any comment?  

Sunday

 Sunday - one word says it all.

Friday

Here is the reason why I was tardy with my "work".                                                                                      In the past couple of days, a lot of unexpected (by me) assignments came my way.  Actually, there are times when I have several ideas and then I sit and write a few days ahead. The problem with that is that then I tend to forget that I should write again. And that is what happened now, I was very comfortable doing nothing and just didn't think of sitting down and write. Sorry!

Yesterday (Friday) I had a very trying day. Besides doing my stuff, my wife announced that in the evening she would like to go to Friday evening services. There is nothing wrong with this. We occasionally go into Manhattan to the Central Synagogue or to Temple Emanuel. Yesterday she said she wanted to go to Temple Emanuel. Ok, I said, what should I wear?

For a long time I didn't have a decent piece of clothing on me. I live in warmup pants and tee shirts. I love the pants because as I said earlier they are very forgiving. But one can not go to a temple in warmup pants, right? So I started a long and upsetting process of finding a pair of pants that still fit me. At the end I succeeded! I found the pants, the shirt and jacket. Now, I have to remember for the next time I have to dress up. But still this is very upsetting when one can not close his pants in the front.

My wife, Abigail and me went into the City and to the temple. It was very nice service, about an hour long and since I have no idea about the Hebrew language it helped that the service is primarily in English. After the service we drove home and had a very nice Passover dinner. It was a long day but it turned out very well.

Don't drink and drive

Don't drink and drive!

That is the slogan to be found everywhere and this is what is stamped into our brain the day we start to drive. And this is true. I am a great believer in this rule. And that is why I foin d the following very interesting.

The country, the highways, the cities are filled with gas stations. Lately most of the gas stations expanded their operation to sell food and drinks to the driving public. Fine, there is nothing wrong with that. Chips, candies, coffee, sandwiches etc. The bigger the station, the bigger their market is, and more varieties can be found.

One of their best sellers are alcohol! Beer and wine in abundance. Now, I am sure a guy does not run down to the corner gas station to buy his beer for the home instead going to the supermarket or liquor store. Most of these shoppers are the drivers on the road. A six-pack for the next stretch of a trip will come very handy!

I know AAA is fighting for various road safety issues and I am surprised this issue never came up. Probably because if it did it would have found tremendous resistance from gas station operators. If this is not a double standard, then I don't know what is.

Birthday gift

Here is the explanation of my tardiness.

Last Thursday was my wife's birthday and there were some surprises that she didn't know about. The biggest surprise was that her son who lives in Florida unexpectedly arrived around noon. This was a birthday present she didn't expect at all. The screaming, the tears, the laughter, the kissing was just everywhere.

He is a very pleasant young man who is always welcome in our house. We had great times with him. Ate out every night, went around the City, played cards at home and talked a lot. Abigail loves her brother and the two got along very swell. So well that Abigail shed tears when he left to go back to Florida. 

He is a computer wiz and as such he fixed ofr updated all our computers and cell phones. We didn't give him any chance to relax. Just bombarded him with dumb tech questions. But credit to him, he patiently explained all our inquiries, while quietly thinking: what a bunch of dummies. 

Anyway at the end it turned out to be a very nice birthday for my wife. So, it is understandable that in the midst of all these happenings I just could not find the time to sit down and write. Mea culpa!

Mixed

It seems there is no way for ordinary criminals, no matter how smart they think they are not to get caught. Yesterday morning there was this terrible shooting in a Brooklyn subway station where about 15 people were shot. Before the day was over the police already had a person of interest they were looking for.

Today, before noon they already caught the man. That is pretty good police work in my opinion. The person fits the description I was talking about a few days ago. It was not yet mentioned what was the reason for such a horrendous act, but I am sure they will find it. 

Because of the frequency of subway crimes people are more and more afraid to take the subways and this results in more automobile traffic on the roads in rush hours. Hopefully this is only temporary and eventually things will go back to normal.                                                                                                         -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A few days ago we still had heat in the apartment because the temperature was below the 55 degree threshold. Yesterday it was in the 70s today it is in the 60s. Balmy spring weather is upon us. Watching the ten day forecasts the temperatures are fluctuating up and down like crazy. In North Dakota there was a major snowstorm yesterday. Hopefully that weather will not come this way because it would be very interesting to see here at this time of the year.

But we are living in a crazy world and as things are nothing would surprise me. As I always said, one lives long enough one see many, many crazy things.

Postscript

A postscript to yesterday's writing, this morning during the rush hour there was a senseless shooting at one of the Brooklyn subway stations. Nobody knows what prompted this but about 15 people got hurt, some seriously. At least nobody died. It does not look like a terror attack but still, a shooting is a shooting. This is terrible and our glorious mayor is at home because he tested positive to Covid-19.

The other interesting thing is that the lieutenant governor of New York State, an African American man was arrested today by the FBI because of campaign financing irregularities. That means he took or spent illegal monies. 

This lieutenant governor is the current governor's running mate for the next election. Only time will tell if he would be kept on. Andrew Cuomo the previous governor, a democrat was made to quit because some women claimed he came on strong (few unrequited hugs and kisses). That was a major crime, illegal use of campaign funds is ok.

I hope Cuomo will decide to run again, I liked him. 

Black

New York City has a new black mayor. He won last year's November election on the platform that he is black. He garnered the black votes and the votes of other people who just didn't want to go up against him. Once in office he surrounded himself with blacks. The police commissioner is black, and his inner circle of advisors are all black. Every speech he makes he emphasizes his race.

Ever since he took office crime escalated in this city. It looks like it is a free for all as far as crime goes. Every day the nightly news broadcasts are full of shootings, attacks, robberies and other crimes. In many instances closed circuit cameras record the acts and without exception the bad people are always black. Now, is this a coincidence? Why is it not the in the description of the bad person? I think that is the most important fact what the person looks like. Black, oriental, white, Indian or anything else. But in today's world that description is taboo. 

If our society would be colorblind, which unfortunately it is not characters like Al Sharpton would be out of work. It is in their interest that there should be discrimination because that is what keeps them going. New Jersey senator Corey Booker, NYC mayor Eric Adams, vice president Kamala Harris are the biggest racist in the book. Their motto is if it is not black it does not count.

So, where is equality? Why was it so important to choose a mediocre candidate for the Supreme Court? Because she is black and a woman! That is why. The New York City mayor won the election on the back of the black voters, and now crime is running rampant in the city. The new police commissioner, a black woman replaced a white pc who was fairly successful but under this woman things are getting worse and worse. I don't know if the police were given instruction to show restraint with the black perpetrators, but the reality is that thing are going downhill.

Why those security cameras never show any white, oriental or indian people?

 

Sunday

 Same old story. it is Sunday.

What happened Friday

If it ain't broken don't fix it!

This is the old American adage we go by. Actually, I think men go by this more than women. In my opinion, men are more relaxed about their environment. As long as it is comfortable, why change it? Change is tiring, it costs money, and one will not be able to find anything in their usual places.

But women look at this differently. They see things at places where we see nothing. In their minds they are constantly searching for better solutions. Why is the need for always changing things? Quoting My Fair Lady, the musical ...Why can't a woman be more like a man? But no, they must have their way.

That is exactly what happened last Friday. I mentioned before we live in a large, comfortable apartment where everything has its own place. One of the rooms we converted to an office with a desk,computer, fax machine, printers, etc. My wife uses that room.

A little while ago she decided to rearrange this good arrangement. Ojvej, said I. Yesterday, Friday was the day of rearrangement. We have an enormously long sofa in the end of the living room. So, my lovely wife decided that the sofa would go into the office and everything else would go to its place. This involved moving furniture, relocating a wall mounted tv and our cable company sending a technician to rearrange the cable connections.

Thankfully our building super is a good guy and he helped with the heavy work. The cable guy was here for almost two hours in the afternoon and did the relocating work. We have a desk that is large and heavy that and the sofa had to go through that door that is not very wide. Lots of grunting and cursing but they succeeded. My wife and the super did all the lifting, I was the advisor. 

After all the drillings and relocations were completed the super left and we started a certain amount of cleanup. A little after 4pm the cable guy arrived. He also moaned and groaned when he saw what was needed to be done. But heroically he completed the work that lasted about an hour and a half.

After he left, major cleaning. I spent most of the day on my feet just helping here and there, my wife did most of the work. By the end of the day, around midnight we were both dead tired.  it is understandable why I skipped my regular edition. 

Friday

It is not that I forgot, but yesterday I had such a busy day that I just had absolutely no time to sit down and write. I will explain what happened and why this day was missed.

Driving

I got my driver license in 1960 and have been driving ever since. That is a very long time and a lot of miles. I drove in Europe, Canada, the Caribbean and naturally in the US. I drove up and down the East Coast of the US several times. What I am trying to say is that I do have some experience in driving.

However, a few years ago I decided not to drive anymore. My wife is a very good driver and I have full faith in her driving skill. Not to sound sexist but she drives like a man! I stopped because of my age and also, I have a little vision problem. So why endanger the people around me, I stopped. Even though I passed the vision test and have a valid license, I feel better just to sit in the passenger seat.

And that is not as easy as it sounds. I always had my way of driving and looking back 60 years I wasn't such a bad driver. The hard part is not to be an annoying backseat driver. I watch my wife handling traffic and trying very hard not to offer suggestions, warnings or just plain telling her what to do. I have no right on this front. She is the captain, and I am just a lowly sailor on that ship.

She does things I wouldn't do, or she takes routes I wouldn't take, or she drives slower than I would and a few more things. But if I want to eat dinner at night, I better keep my mouth shot.

The hard part is that when we are going on a long distance trip my job is to make sure she stays awake. To sit in the passenger seat and just stare out the window is very hard. I try to engage her in conversations but eventually I become very sleepy. I am not permitted to sleep while she is driving. She claims it is very difficult for her to keep driving when I am sleeping next to her. So, I stay awake, fighting against closing my eyes. By the time we arrive at our destination I am more tired than she is.

A million times I think how nice it would be to drive again, but just for safety's sake I am not pushing this subject anymore. I accept things the way they are.

Que sera, sera!

Abigail

I might be old fashioned, yes, I am. I have old ideas, yes, I do. But as I wrote earlier those are all good things. When I criticize Abigail, her retort is that I am old, and I think the old ways. Well, those things worked for me, and I am sure they would work for anybody else. 

I noted before, Abigail is a good student. She studies hard and gets good grades (mostly). But she is also a social butterfly. Hates to be alone, always need a friend nearby. There is nothing wrong with that if it does not cost any gradepoints.

I never ever heard studying together with other people who have nothing in common with the others are studying. And that is exactly what Abigail loves to do. She gets together with her girlfriend, and they study together. The friend studies photography while Abigail studies forensic science. There is absolutely no common subject that they could do together.

Abigail's boyfriend studies accounting, yet they like to study together. In my book that kind of studying has absolutely no value. Friends can not stop talking to each other, and unless they concentrate on their work that kind of studying has zero value.

But what do I know. I am an old stogie who is behind the times. At least that is what I am being told.

April 4

Yesterday, Monday was April 4. During the Soviet era that was a national holiday in Hungary. That was the day when the soviet army liberated Hungary from the Nazis. Actually, while Budapest was liberated in January, the last of the Germans were kicked out of Hungary by April 4. Once the regime changed this day stopped to be a holiday.

Now, here is my take on April 4. I was in the Budapest ghetto from December 1944 until about the middle of January 1945. The ghetto was surrounded with a wall, no exit, no entrance. The few access openings were guarded by armed Hungarian nazis, the Arrow Cross thugs. On that particular day of January 1945, we awoke to a very quiet day. No noises, no shootings, nothing. Very eerie. Some brave elements went toward the wall and noticed that all the guards were gone. Once we heard that we started to go outside the wall. Scared and careful.

Not a person in sight. Suddenly a truck approached. It was a Russian military truck loaded up with bread. It stopped front of us, and they started to distribute the bread. At that time we were starving and the bread was welcomed wit thanks and tears.

After we went back to our living quarters, packed up and started to go back to our homes. We all had our homes from which we were taken earlier by the nazis. As we were walking on the street we came up a line of Russian soldiers, blocking the street, with knives in their hands. Oyvey, I would have said if I knew Yiddish. Naturally we all got very scared.

What these soldiers did was that they cut the yellow star of David off our outer garments that we were still wearing. They made us understand that this was of no importance anymore, we were free.

I know that the soviets did a lot of bad things in Hungary but as far as I am concerned if they didn't liberate us at that time I would by dead. For me April 4 is still Liberation Day.

Spring?

It supposed to be springtime. Spring usually ushers in nice and mild weather, the end of winter. But this time I think winter likes it so much that it does not want to leave. In short, it is uncomfortably cold and wet. According to New York City law apartment buildings must provide heat when the outside temperature drops below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, lately it does not go much above 45 degrees, and that is pretty uncomfortable for my old bones. 

This world is going to the dogs. Nothing is like it supposed to be or as we are used to it. The trouble with living long is that we get used to things and when those things change, we complain. But complaining is a right we, old(er) people have. In today's world we don't have too many rights but complaining is one of the few.

There are two reasons we complain. One of the two is because we know better. We lived long, we did everything and with that come experience. As much as we remember everything we did was done perfectly. And that gives us the right to complain.

The other reason we complain is comfort. Every change in our lives come with exerting more energy than we really want to. That makes these changes uncomfortable and that is a capital reason for complaining.

Putting these two elements together, and God created the grouchy old men.

Sunday

 This week I was good. Did not forget anything. So, today I rest.

April 1

April first is April Fool/s day. We used to play tricks on our friends. parents, family members and anybody near us. Unfortunately, life is so screwed up that this custom went out of style. There are so many problems, issues in life that scaring somebody just for the fun of it could have the opposite effect. 

Everybody is on edge with the constant terrible news in the media. Crime, war, economy, virus. There is really no room for pulling a joke on someone. So, on these bases the first of the month came and went without any ballyhoo. Just as well.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Technology is great. I love to watch webcams, and my two favorite webcam locations is a Vermont ski place and my favorite Caribbean island of St. Maarten. In winter it is very interesting to keep switching between these locations. One has a temperature of about 10 degrees Fahrenheit while the other is in the 80s and people are bathing in the warm Caribbean waters.

Since I like both I can not make up my mind where I would rather like to be. But this is no problem because I am only in my living room in NY with no plans to be at any of these places. But I can dream, right? Thanks for the technology.

Ukraine, again

 Back to Ukraine

In my opinion if I am asking for help, asking for assistance, the worst thing to do is demand. Demanding will not result in anything but being scorned. But that is exactly what the Ukrainian PM is doing. He is demanding, and harshly criticizing those who don't provide what he demands.

I am not saying that he is not smart, and he does not have his country's interest in heart, but does he not realize that fulfilling his demands would definitely lead to WWIII. No one country is worth starting a new world war and nobody in his right mind want to create an excuse for such a calamity.

I think Zelensky is so narrow sighted that he does not care about the possible outcomes if his demands are met. It seems to me that in his thinking if his country goes down then might as well the rest of Europe should go down, too. 

We already lived through WWII and it was terrible. To start another WW is unconscionable because I believe we have no idea how terrible that could be. Furthermore the last world war skipped the US but now with the improved technology there is no place on Earth that could be safe from destruction. Now, I wonder if Mr. Z knows this or even cares.

Booster

So far, we were advised to take a booster shot after the first two vaccine shots. This booster was not what they hoped it to be. There were several complications with it, dormant illnesses came to life and other medical issues surfaced. They were pushing the booster on 65+ people. I guess that is the class of people that cost the most.

They are mostly retired, collect Social Security and use Medicare. So, they are non-productive. These are the ones they want to get rid of. But not enough took to the bait, and they had to come up with another solution. And that solution is the fourth shot or second booster shot for people over 50. This supposed to be for the omicron subvariant that is spreading. I have no idea what omicron subvariant is but I don't believe them at all.

I am convinced they came up with it because not enough older people died and this fourth shot might help the statistics. I will not take any boosters until it becomes absolutely necessary for my everyday life. I just don't trust the system and the explanations they come up with.

This entire thing is so controversial and ridiculous and political that my head is spinning from all the stories and comments I hear. It is a joke when politicians talk like medical experts and give advise to us mortals. That alone is enough to lose it credibility.