Dementia Blues

Multi-infarct dementia – A term that will never ever leave my functioning cerebral cortex. It took residence there for good on my birthday last year when it officially took up residence in my mom, inflicting a soul crushing, dignity beating afflication on my mom from which she is never going to recover. I didn’t know about ischemia related concerns and TIA related episodes or even the concept of ministrokes. All of which are now permanently fixed in my lexicon.

There are regular episodes where something temporarily goes cataclysmically wrong, and then, most comes back. What gets lost in the translation is never immediately obvious. It’s a harsh reminder of the vicious cruelty of the disease as for my birthday this year, mom experienced another episode that temporarily stole her ability to do any body control.

I mean, I’m grateful to the gods that my dad is still around and healthy, largely and that I’m into my mid 50s, so I’ve had my mom there a lot longer than many folks I care about so I’m not getting cheated, but the way she is getting taken is flat out cruel. For somebody who never put herself first, that is just a horrible abomination.

I believe I’ve heard her laugh 3 times in the past 18 months. The disease is cruel that way taking dynamic souls rendering them into near mannequinness. Thorough the experience of the past 18 months, I was able to keep a cool head when it became obvious that she didn’t have the ability to participate at all in getting bundled up in coat and scarf to return across the street to her long term care facility where thankfully the right nurse was working.

It’s a far cry from days of yore. My parents sold their house after 51 years at the start of this odyssey. A year or two prior, I remember going out to visit and my mom and I were having coffee. The night before they had journeyed to a party for the Flow Cyctrometry lab at Roswell Park and she was telling me a little bit about the experience.

“Michael, one by one, these little nerds kept coming up to me and telling me that your father is a “fucking genius.” Hearing her f-bomb made us both laugh a little. It’s not really news to hear that my dad was the smartest kid in class, but I hope my mom wasn’t and isn’t selling herself short.

As an exercise, character building or not, she dispatched me to sell some raffle tickets for the Clarence, New York Democratic Party. The very likelihood that the area Democratic population was the contents of our house was a secondary concern. My best Friend’s dad bought a punch with the proviso that his name did NOT go on the tickets. My little brother never knew how close he came in his first 50/50.

In the MC Esher building block that was the family house. My room was on the upper level of the second floor and my mom’s sewing machine and desk area was in the adjoining room. The reason this matters was I discovered my music about the time the red and blue Beatles greatest hits records came out and dutifully got copies. A few years later, two more collections came out, Love Songs and Rock and Roll music. I dutifully wanted a copy of Rock and Roll Music. As girls were just starting to be a concern that I was just starting to do badly with, I was more concerned at the time with Rock and Roll. When Christmas rolled around, a copy of Love Songs was waiting. Mom was counter programming me. I learned to love em, even the mushy numbers,

That, there is a flipping genius.

A disease that attacks in such a way doesn’t play. Mom managed the family she was born into, built a home for the one she married into, and spent her life keep us all safe. Health care Karma doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter the thousands of nights she kept us all safe, the wrongs she tried to right, the world she dared to be better. She’s getting punished. I’m not exactly sure for what. When the ministrokes come, they subside, but you can’t help but wonder what won’t come back, as if to say, just in case the trauma wasn’t enough, here’s something you can’t do anymore, or a phrase that won’t come easy.

That’s what is unfair. I don’t know if the instrument exists that can accurately measure my levels of emotional exhaustion and depression, but those things take a back seat, when you are literally holding your parent up. When the nights they’ve protected you are in the thousands, you keep fighting

BAD

While Biden, Buttegeig and Sanders verbally slap each other around on policy in New Hampshire, Elizabeth Warren remains the adult in the room, focusing on replacing the orange elephant in the room. It gave me pause as to our latest round of presidential nonsense.

And if you are of the type who is upset that the speaker ripped up her copy of the State of the Union, think back to when various speakers wouldn’t even stand up to greet President Obama and members of the gallery had no compunction about yelling “You lie!” So, people like Matt Gaetz should shut up with their hallow outrage about the current speaker’s behavior. She ripped up her copy (we think, the Vice President isn’t done taping it back together). I mean it’s not like she started a fraud university or ripped off her own children’s charity.

So it turns out that a racist, bully, slightly to the right of Attila the Hun blowhard can spend decades browbeating, harassing, obfuscating for anything that isn’t conservative, xenophobic white male and he can get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Probably drops the value for previous award winners who generally got them for not being unlanced boils on the buttocks of humanity.

It’s bad enough that we are numb enough that everybody kept a straight face as Susan Collins says she thinks he learned his lesson from impeachment. I mean nobody guffawed or sniggered “Bullshit? (well, except maybe the President, and he even admitted that was not the case.) Senator, just go cash the check from his reelection campaign and enjoy the safety from any real opposition.

I’m not surprised that acquittal was the result of the hearings in the Senate as the game was rigged from the get go with no witnesses, no evidence, and an allegiance to party over people. The oaths they signed was largely a moot point with many too cowardly to vote anything along what they heard out of fear of retribution or lack of financial contribution. I mean Lindsey Graham was a house manager in Clinton’s impeachment that was over an extramarital fling. As far as flip flops go, that’s downright impressive.

Kudos to Mitt Romney for following his own lead. I don’t know how much he was actually risking but I appreciate him going his own way, an actual republican as opposed to whatever the current GOP pretends to be now. Don Jr decided to deride Romney for having a conscience with some “manly” name calling on Twitter, keeping it classy. I’m a little upset that I actually know who Jr. is when there clearly is no reason to as it is up there with actual media reports of the “master showman” at work. Journalism shouldn’t be about stagecraft when such critical substance is getting swept under the rug.

It’s interesting that the President had to deride Romney’s faith at a Prayer Breakfast, which he promptly turned into a pep rally (since he just can’t give a speech). I’m a firm believer in whatever works for you, whatever gets you through the day, just keep it to yourself. Mitt actually did that, only alluding to his faith as part of his decision making process and the pettiness of the President and his crime family decided to pick on that first.

I guess my central issue what kind of aphrodisiac is power? That you are willing to subsume your beliefs to stay close to it? That you are willing to contradict yourself to keep it? That you turn your back on the people who voted for you to spite those who didn’t, that you are fine with one branch of government stripped of all checks and balances, the american people (remember us, the folks you are supposed to represent) lose, none of us are represented from dirty water to nexus cards for New Yorkers to our social security being taken, the school lunch programs to actual fair legitimate elections and the list is pretty lengthy. What is it?

The people who have it don’t know better. And they don’t care. It’s a big club and we ain’t in it.

It’s bad.

You’ve just won the Iowa Caucus!

“I’m going to Disneyworld…” but more realistically somewhere in New Hampshire

Now that Iowa has shown us that there really isn’t an app for everything, it did make me wonder about this whole process. A live look at their app.

Too many “delegates” appeared on TV sounding and looking they had survived a really intense Fantasy Football Draft. Given the over emphasis Iowa has, you would think the Democratic National Committee would have had them better organized than a high tech version of a Marx Brothers movie. “Hey Diddle Diddle, let’s vote up the middle.”

While the Electoral College is the subject of numerous aimless discussions on social media and a lot of appointed government officials are making jerks of themselves on Twitter, an idea popped into my addled little brain.

Do all the damn primaries, caucuses and what not on one day, a national primary day, do it in May or June. Let the six months of campaigning that we have just witnessed fold into the actual year. We are all so fatigued already and the actual voting is just getting started. People may have forgotten already that the President does have a challenger in his own party.

I know what you are thinking. But, we’d all have to do our own home work. Let that town in New Hampshire start us off at midnight eastern if you need a quaint story,

I watched a little of the coverage and it was an incoherent mess with not a whole lot to say, but it didn’t stop people from trying to speak. With so much focus on Iowa and by the time I publish this, New Hampshire, I can’t help but wonder if the emphasis, the money, the media can help but skew voters, not unlike making projections on East Coast voting returns at five after 9 when West Coast voters are still trying to get out of work.

“With 3% percent reporting it looks like Harvey Lipschitz will win!”

“Didja hear that, hon, Lipschitz won Delaware…no point in us heading out.” “Nope, make yourself a drink.”

Ooh, that Lipschitz.

The whole slew of debates didn’t further causes on the Democratic side. We achieved nothing by having monthly debates over the past six months other than cover such ground breaking subjects like:

“Is she/he likeable enough to get elected?” – Who cares? I’m not going to invite the winner for a beer. I want them to have the savvy to protect social security, make the water cleaner, to serve the republic and all that.

“What’s your skin care regimen?” – A question that probably doesn’t dog Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.

I mean any polling has steered money without any real lifting of the debate, just eliminating some promising candidates who couldn’t crack the bluster.

Maybe this is all hooey, but when information is critical and gossip not much, we seem to be drowning in the latter and getting more ignorant of the former.

But perhaps, there should be a step back.

This may have done the trick. No chads, no ethernet, no central data processing. On Election Nights when I was in college, I was a “stringer” and went around and made a little cash by going from district to district and watched as folks took the sheet off the back of these and counted them up.

If ever there is a thing to have facts over scuttlebutt, it’s our elections.

That should matter. Let’s get somebody who can handle the tallying. Maybe him…

Halftime

I have this crazy notion.

Bear with me, it Is a little odd. But here goes,

Let people do what they can do very well without feeling compelled to take potshots, especially when you don’t stand a chance of being able to do nothing even remotely close.

I didn’t see this year’s Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira until the following morning and, you know what, it was fine.

There were hits, there were medleys, there were a host of musical influences stemming from South Florida and beyond, costumes in the tradition of the ladies’ ancestries and a spectacle for that grand spectacle that is the biggest football game on the calendar.

I saw this morning some sharp eyed fool with too much time on his hands (as it is only insecure men who hid in the anonymity of the internet) busting Shakira for lip synching. “You don’t say, Sparky?!?” It’s a tv show, one that has to get put together very quickly. Everybody has a prerecorded soundtrack in case. It’s not a concert, and I can’t blame folks for not leaving things to chance. It’s one of the few things the NFL was smart about as you don’t want to be the guy who can’t figure out why the one mic isn’t working with that many eyes upon you.

A lot of the social media “outrage” had people ticked that the ladies were flashing skin but forgot all about Adam Levine doing the same last year. They were at least akin to the costuming of their heritages, Levine was just mostly naked.

But when you think about it, when the intellectual climate has issues over differentiations of vanilla, it was a positive thing for strong women who aren’t teenagers but in better shape than many to rule the stage on one of the biggest dates on the cultural calendar. I hope they inspired others to aspire to the same.

Another wag pointed out that Shakira hasn’t had a hit in a long time. That seemed nitpicky because good music is timeless and in the sea of classic rock bands to play the halftime show in the past dozen years or so, having anything on the radio didn’t seem to be a prerequisite. The best halftime performer in my addled little brain was Prince, whose shining moment came when the skies opened during a majestic version of an over twenty year old (at the time) “Purple Rain.”

Folks got to realize that just because you are predisposed to the old guitar bands (as I admittedly am), it isn’t running the musical show these days. There is lots of other things happening musically to the point where rock is taking a back seat. It’s not dead, it just needs to make some room. Just because it isn’t an old white dude with a guitar doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. Ours is supposedly big tent. If the halftime isn’t doing it for you, use that time wisely like, go refill the chips and guac and relax, it’s a game.

Pitchers and Catchers report soon….In the meantime, settle down, they could bring back up with people and I don’t think anybody wants that.