She goes for the shiny things
The toys that make noise
The men who are boys
She doesn’t regret
Giving up
All the good things in life
Like daughters and husbands
And parents and homes
So long as she isn’t alone
So long as she has her fun
In the sun
Laugh and flirt
Raise her skirt
Family at home
All alone
Wondering when she’ll come home
One of my top five favorite films is one that many people have either never heard of, or they’ve seen and absolutely hated.
It is “Stay,” from 2005, starring Ryan Gosling, Ewan MacGregor, and Naomi Watts.
SPOILER ALERT: “Stay” is a film that deals with death, and the moments just beforehand. It begins with a car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge and ends with a car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge. Everything in between the beginning and ending is all in the mind of the dying young man who was involved in the car crash.
What stayed with me most (pun intended) was not only Ryan Gosling (my second introduction to him after “The Notebook”) but the film’s visuals. I bought the DVD and watched it probably twenty times over the period of two years. Each viewing, without fail, revealed to me yet another detail that I had previously missed. To this day, I can view it again and find something new, or watch other fans review it on YouTube or on the blogosphere somewhere and find something that I failed to see.
I could go on for hours about the casting (and the use of the cast), the choice of scenery, and the camera angles. I can explain that the lighting in almost every scene is evocative of streetlights on broken glass, as well as headlights and the streetlights above the Brooklyn Bridge. Square patterns are everywhere in this film, meant to represent the brickwork of said bridge.
I could go on but I won’t.
Because I only recently realized that the other thing that fascinates me so much about this film is its depiction of the final moments before one’s death. What is going on in the mind of the dying? What are they thinking, feeling, hoping, witnessing? This film gives me great insight into those fleeting, rushed, yet lasting seconds that a dying person goes through.
They worry about what they are leaving behind. Not where they are going, but what they have done. Who they have loved. Who they might have hurt.
A similar, probably unknown film that I just recently watched is from Turkey, “Doom of Love.” It was suggested by NetFlix after I watched the Turkish series, “Ask 101” (aka “Love 101”) starring Selahattin Pasali from another NetFlix series, “Midnight at the Pera Palace.”
“Doom of Love” features beautiful scenes of lush jungle and beach areas throughout Turkey, just as “Love 101” focuses on Turkey’s stunning, San Francisco-like city of Istanbul.
“Doom of Love” also focuses on death and what we think of and wish for and remember during our last moments. It also features the amazing vocals of actress Pinar Dinez. I recommend the film simply for the music alone.
Some critics panned this movie, but I found it moving and, while sad, also hopeful.
We don’t know what goes through the mind of a loved one that we lose, as we are losing them. But I know that in two personal instances, medical doctors and nurses have encouraged me to speak with my loved one even after they’ve lost consciousness, and to continue speaking after they’ve passed.
As my boyfriend lay dying of stage IV pancreatic cancer, I helped reunite him with his eldest brother whom he had not seen in a long time. I also invited my boyfriend’s best friends and their wives to come say their goodbyes in the hospital on the day that he died, and all eight of us stood around his bedside for as long as staff would allow us to as he went from being able to speak to taking his final breaths. We spoke with him, and then to him, and finally, about him, as we took turns holding his hand. I have no doubt he heard every word long after his heart stopped beating.
When my stepmother passed away, my two sisters and I drove from Pennsylvania to Long Island to be with our younger half-sister as she said goodbye to her mother. My little sister’s husband was with us, and said later that he had never seen family members come together in this way, and that it touched him deeply to see us all say our farewells and thanks to the woman who helped raise us, even after the breathing tube had been removed and her fragile inhales and exhales had stopped.
Death is a slow goodbye to earth, a moving photograph album of memories, and a quiet talk about oneself to God. I no longer fear it, knowing now that no matter whether I write a bestselling novel or otherwise make my mark upon this world, I leave behind the memory of myself with those that will treasure it, understand it, and remember it with love.
My fellow American voters and citizens,
Last week, many voters tuning in to the presidential debate on CNN were shocked, and/or dismayed, by Biden’s appearance and performance. I’m sure that many Democrats were upset by Trump’s performance, for other reasons, and some of them I can even agree with (few, though, very few). Depending upon their political viewpoint, some voters had no change in heart.
Last week, and today, the Supreme Court came to some decisions that have either upset or satisfied US citizens, again, depending upon their political viewpoint.
If you are undecided about who to vote for this November, I urge you to vote for Trump. I urge you to vote GOP.
I was raised in a conservative family and until 2008 I always voted Republican. Because I was not in agreement with our war in Iraq and what led up to it, I decided to switch to the left and I voted for Obama. I voted for him twice.
After he left office, I supported Bernie Sanders because I have never liked nor trusted the Clintons. I convinced myself that “Democratic” Socialism could work.
Silly me.
I’m grateful to Sue Glassberg and Peter Giro for teaching me about Communism from up close and personal perspectives based in Venezuela and Cuba, respectively, and I thank my family members for also reminding me we are a Republic and we have a capitalist economy for a reason.
Sanders at least taught me about populism, and I found the switch to Trump’s brand of it an easy switch to make.
Anyone who trusts in Democrats to run our country well can stop reading my post now.
Anyone who doesn’t should think hard about registering to vote this November, for Trump or at least RFK Jr., or a write-in.
Biden’s not going to stop running and Harris is no better. We will have a combination of the two for the next four years unless enough people gain some sense between now and November.
Register, vote, and talk to your friends about registering and voting. If you can, donate or volunteer for the GOP or, here in Pennsylvania you can work with Scott Presler (The Persistence) by visiting his site EarlyVoteAction.com and downloading his awesome app that helps you connect with fellow PA voters.
If you can’t volunteer time, consider donating quarterly – even a small amount.
Last thing, I urge you to contact your local and state reps and officials to let them know you are concerned about the integrity of our elections and our ballots. We want assurance that only ballots of US citizens will be counted this year.
This could be a Republican renaissance moment – and you could be a part of it.
Please feel free to reach out to me with questions, support, comments, ideas. I can get you connected with several volunteers or give you more information. LissieB@LisBaumann on X or LisBaumann@yahoo
I’m going to start a movement on behalf of awkward people like me.
People who, all their lives, have suffered from low self-esteem and been teased and taunted by classmates in school for having “zits” and braces and being terrible at sports, or too tall or too short or too slow to learn.
I and the people like me have been oppressed for too long, disqualified from sports because we were picked last for every team…disqualified from theatrical productions because we were nervous when singing or acting in front of the cool kids…not hired because of our looks or frumpy wardrobe or lack of social graces.
Shall I start a GoFundMe? Will you help me get my agenda into every school curriculum starting now?
So, help me out here, because I just don’t get it.
Y’all wanted “normalcy” again so you voted in an elderly man who gets lost on the tarmac while heading for his plane and stumbles up the stairs in heavy winds.
One of the first things he does is cancel the Keystone pipeline, making us now dependent on foreign oil again which puts us in a bad position every which way and raises gas prices. Why? To appease the Green New Deal people even though the pipeline is safer than transporting crude oil via rail. He’s put thousands out of work and says they can make solar panels and cap oil wells instead. Didn’t Obama already try that?
Then he claims he’s all for unity but pushes through one leftist order after another, not through Congress but by executive order.
Then he tells everyone in Central America that he feels their pain and if they make it to the US they can get free healthcare, money, and jobs. Then he wonders why we have a crisis at the border. He stops construction of the border wall, ends deportations, allows unaccompanied children over the border in such quantities that he can no longer house them so the government is flying these kids all over the country to live with guardians who no longer need background checks because that would slow down the process.
So, letting non-English speaking kids in to live with possible criminals is…normal? Letting undocumented foreigners into the country who are 10% Covid positive is…normal?
Having China mock us and Russia threaten us within two months of Biden’s taking office is…normal? Having a president who needs extensive notes and numbered questions at his first presser is…normal?
I just don’t get it.
I am a woman who had an abortion, so, I feel qualified enough to write my perspective on it.
It sucked.
The whole thing was wrong, from beginning to end, and I hate the fact that I killed something greater than a fly. I let spiders live in my house just so I don’t have to kill the flies myself.
I killed a human being, a potential daughter or son. I tried to tell myself it was an embryo, a bunch of cells, just a thing that I didn’t have to consider being real until after four months or so in my uterus.
I won’t continue on about what I felt but will share what I observed.
It was so disturbing to me that, shortly afterwards, I wrote a poem about it. I write poems when I cannot deal with what I’m having to deal with. This is why I am not a famous poet.
I cannot find the poem now, but, what is so odd about the poem is that, when I reread it years later after I had published it online in a comment forum that no longer exists on a liberal website, I can’t help but wonder why my liberal friends and I thought the poem worked in our favor towards pushing women’s rights to abortion.
Basically, the poem ran through – briefly and succinctly – my whole experience. As I said, it was disturbing. Here’s my recollection, no longer poetic:
We arrived at some ungodly early hour and I had not even brushed my teeth because they warned me I must not have anything after 10 PM the night before, even chewing gum or a throat lozenge. We, being my boyfriend at the time, and me, arriving at the clinic.
I was sent off to a closet area to change into nothing but a paper hospital gown, my socks, and my sneakers.
Well, before this, I was sent into a room to sit at a desk with a soft spoken young woman who told me she was a psychiatrist or something like that and did I really want to do this, and I said yes. I was given pamphlets to read, briefly, and asked a few questions. She felt that I answered them correctly because she sent me on my way.
So, back to the storage closet where I changed into my paper gown. It was a large storage closet, a room with all four walls covered with shelving that held boxes of gloves and bandages and such, but with a large and open central area big enough for eight chairs and a television. That’s where I sat by myself for ten minutes before another woman joined me. She walked into the small changing area that I had used to get into my paper gown and she came out wearing her own paper gown.
She took the seat right next to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind if she turned on the television and I said I didn’t, so she turned it on.
And she put on some Judge show. Too early in the day for Judge Judy, but some show I had never seen that seemed to be a mix of Judge Judy mixed with, perhaps, Jerry Springer.
I felt it very ironic that we would be watching a Judge show at this time and place, but didn’t think it wise to say so out loud.
So I said nothing.
And then she turned to me and said, “This your first time, honey?”
And I felt the tears well up and my throat get all clenched up and soggy, and nodded yes.
I think I started to tell her all about my boyfriend and I not wanting to have kids and this was all a mistake.
Before I could say more, two more women came in, or, I think it was a woman who looked young, and her niece or daughter. Both were having abortions and carpooled together.
I learned within fifteen minutes that neither had told their husbands, family, or anyone other than their mutual friends that they were there. They didn’t want their men to know that three kids was enough already, they told me.
Then another woman came in and changed the channel, and then my name was called. I had been first in. I was to be first out.
It was my first time under anasthesia and they laid me flat on the table and to this day I cannot lie down flat because it makes me dizzy.
A big burly doctor in green scrubs introduced himself to me and then had the assistants and anasthesiologist introduce themselves and then told me to put my sneakers into the stirrups and then the mask was over my face and I was counting backwards from 100 to 98 and then nothing.
I awoke in a room where I was eventually given a lollipop and my boyfriend helped me out.
That was pretty much it.
Except that I kept asking myself “was it wrong?” and I could not answer myself.
And I still cannot.
I think only my maker can answer that question.
My maker made me, and I killed something that was made in me. Religion beside the point for a moment, I stopped something natural from happening. Me, myself. I stopped it. I made the choice to kill it off, something that was happening naturally. Something growing. Something potential. Something that, right now, could be a teen-aged son or daughter.
I did that.
At the time, it was what I felt was my only choice. I will not go into the reasons. It was my feelings and my choice that led me to have an abortion. At the time, I felt it was for the best.
The best for whom, I questioned. I question to this day.
The women in that changing room had all been through it before and seemed to treat it as something natural.
That’s what shocked me the most. I’m not saying I’m above them, though. I’m just saying it’s ridiculously easy to do, apparently, for some. And I thought I was able to do it easily, and I remember even joking on my way out the door, “All this and a lollipop, too!”
The fact that it weighs so heavily, though, years later, tells me that it’s not natural at all.
I love maps. I love, love, love them. I love roads and maps and places and finding them and going there all alone to see what only I want to see. And what I can’t see, I can google map.
Anaximander – must study this more. Someday. Meantime:
TARRYTOWN, N. Y., Sept. 17—A 20‐room turreted cas tle, built in the eighteen‐nine ties on a 27‐acre site over looking the Hudson River here, was devastated today by’ a fire casting more than five hours.
The fire in the unoccupied structure was reported at about 1:50 A.M. by a house keeper on the grounds.
The castle, built of brick painted to resemble stone, was acquired at the turn of the century by the late Jul ian Detmer, a textile manu facturer. The building is now owned by Eugene Detmer, who lives in another house on the estate. His wife said that the castle had been up for sale.
Are you the kind of person who thinks just for the fun of it?
Well, you should be.
You’d better put your kingdom up for sale…up for sale.
Well did she make you cry
I click on google maps and turn to satellite view then swoop down like a hawk on any given street and then drive.
I lived near Detmer Castle and Axe Castle, too. Whole lot of castles going on in Tarrytown. Just check a map!
Spirits don’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind nor the sun or the rain. Just google map your destination and find hidden places to explore! Castles full of rooms, staircases, and gloom! Find the map and get the treasure! Find the map, and see the ghost. Find the map, and know all.
Have I got an anaximander to grind with you!
Pretty ironic.
Trump has announced he plans to read aloud, by December, the entire transcript of his phone call to Ukraine so the American people can hear for themselves what was truly said.
Meanwhile, John Legend has rewritten and recorded a new and socially acceptable “woke” version of a decades-long Christmas favorite just in time for the holidays.
Give me an honest President willing to have a fireside chat anytime over a social justice warrior who doesn’t understand “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
When I was a kid, and I admit, it was in the 60s
which makes me in my 50s
The moon landing and Martin Luther King Jr.
were current events that we studied in depth
just in first grade
Cuz I went to school in a good school
in New York
And then again,
in Connecticut
And in first grade I was in a class that was 75% white
but if you broke it down, half of them were probably Italian
or of Irish descent
And some were from Jamaica and some were from Trinidad
and a little white boy with red hair and freckles hailed from Australia
In 5th grade I had a friend from New Zealand
and a crush on a black boy
And don’t get me started on the Russian couple in 3rd grade
across the way in our apartment complex
who had their baby not naturally
but through surgery, which I thought was unheard of
What would Barbie think?
Barbie, whose skirts I stuffed with cotton balls to make her pregnant
whenever she married Ken
I cared not where anyone was from so long as we got along
and we did
I couldn’t care less the color of our skin
and neither did they
Imagine
Shitty Thanksgiving, shitty Christmas, shitty New Year, and it just keeps coming.
Mind you, it was wonderful to see family over the holidays, and everything’s been nice, but…
Mom’s in the hospital and my foot is chopped meat and I don’t seem to understand how my new Aetna healthcare card works so I’m getting collection calls 24/7 since last spring…
Life was so much easier before I turned 50.
That being said, the holidays are over and the Democrats are taking over the House. Oh boy!
They want to impeach, impeach, and impeach. They really have no interest at all in building a wall, but they also seem to forget we need help with healthcare.
Just sayin.
prose by the lb 