Thursday, August 21, 2008

Old Aunts 'R' Us

Coming up on the Barack Obama's VP announcements the blogs are writhing again in their contempt for Hillary's 18 million, who are "old aunts with seven cats."

If only I could afford one cat, much less seven! If we had Hillary-Care perhaps my health premiums wouldn't cost $4,000 per year (never mind the rx's and the co-pays).

But meanwhile, here is an identified constituency, which for some reason gets to be personally attacked--because to call someone an old aunt we don't perceive as a compliment. Just as the worst thing you can do to insult a man is to call him a woman the worst thing you can call a woman is old and presumably barren.

Maybe not. I remember on my first picket line, walking around for equality in employment (when the Sec'y of Labor had just announced he was not planning to enforce that particular part of an equal opportunity law), cab drivers rolling by yelling, "If you weren't so ugly you could get a job!!" This was 1970. In 2008 I just read a blogger who said he would never vote for Hillary because she wears pantsuits and he doesn't like her voice.

Great way to choose a President, oh ignorant one. One thing about old people: we vote. If Obama knows what he's doing he'll pick Hillary.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Dream House

Unpacking in the new place, I have survived the packing, the movers' mixups, and the drive from Massachusetts to North Carolina--with the help of children. So much moving going on that I've even been moving in my dreams.

This early morning I dreamed that Denny was here, helping me. He was hammering together storage shelves and replacing the light in the refrigerator. And then he has gone, leaving carpets half-laid, and I wake up wanting coffee. I wander through shadowy new house surrounded by my history: family furniture, Denny's dominator, our chosen art, rise into place. Outside, an insomniac owl hoot hoot hoots.