Hiatus to Haiti

I can’t tell you how many queries I’ve had about the SJ hiatus (two, maybe even three) and I have to say that I’m flattered having assumed that nobody reads it or if they did, resented that they were unable to wrap fish with it when they were through. And I assume that because the flood of snail-mail with checks that I expected never happened, and I’ve never been in the black enough to set up Pay Pal, that people were not willing to sustain my Hennessey habit, but people, these things don’t write themselves.

A dalliance with sobriety makes me realize that I have a lot more energy than I thought I had even without a six pack of Red Bull for breakfast. Rather than use it all up screaming at the news I have decided to put the nimble fingers back to the task of doing whatever it is that the SJ does. But then, thinking about that, is what caused the pause. And I have concluded that it is not a waste of anybody’s time since you don’t gotta read it and, I don’t gotta go onan’on if I don’t feel like it. Wen does her Sudoku and I do this. Sharpens the brain. Maybe.

A big question in the Internet and airwave ether is whether “we” are better off than “we” were a year ago and I can answer with an unqualified, Yes! Wen gave herself a raise and I had my arthritic shoulder fixed. We have a new grandson and we are going out to Chicago to see him in a couple of weeks. I also look forward to hopefully meeting “the Almighty Hawk who, comes sreamin’ down on ya like a giant razor blade, Jack.” And also, too, when the January thaw sets in, the heat here in northern NH is unbearable, but a little early for screens.

Others, by which I mean the 300 million plus inhabitants of the country that are not us, may feel similarly. “President Barack,” as Jesse Jackson recently called him, took office a year ago and immediately stanched the hemorrhaging of jobs to a mere trickle of tens of thousands (who can count that high anywaze?). Of course it’s still bad but you can’t make shit for people who can’t afford shit and employers can’t pay people to do nuttin’. It’ll come back but let’s hope more slowly. Can we please forego the bubbles. We all know that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. And that is what happens to the economy, gambling, heroin taking and bungee jumping.

I’m reading about the 14th century which Barbara Tuchman calls one of the worst of all twenty. The unmitigated greed at the top and most famously and astonishing is the clergy which, in Europe, was all Roman Catholic, you know, “the one true and Holy Roman apostolic church of Christ.” This was before Henry the Ape and Martin Luther Sr. These crooks spelled their god with an L in it. They had estates that equaled that of the really higher up “nobles.” They charged the rich knights for “indulgences” as in: “That mistress will cost you 10K florin old son, if you don’t want to go to hell.” Friendly old fat friar Tuck, that mischievous putz, used to charge the poor to hear confession. But, in France, they had free hospitals. And now, 659 years on, we are getting close to covering most citizens with a kind of slap-dash form of health care. Chalk one up for Pres. Barack, if he makes it.

A year ago the POTUS said we would close Gitmo. Do you really care? I know I don’t one way or the other. He also said he would wind Iraq down and I don’t know if that has happened because it’s rarely mentioned during the three or four hours of news that I watch each weekday. I know there are roadside bombings every once in a while and that has to be better news than, all the freakin’ time. He pledged to carry on the “good war” over in Hamid Karzaistan. Well, you can hardly call “a surge” of 30,000 soldiers, CIA personnel and an unspecified bunch of private contractors a drop in the bucket.

Our (yours and mine) image in the world is way up from the Bush years even as Pres. Barack’s numbers are off by a third from a year ago. I’d still vote for him over the guy who picked the foxy Fox pundit to be a heartbeat away and who called his own wife and meal-ticket the C word in front of reporters. Oh Johnny, you’re still tortured.

The crisis in Haiti will prove to all to be the measure of the man with whom the buck stops. Even his biggest detractors out there (and you know who you are Red and Fred) have got to believe that this situation will be handled better than Katrina, which still needs work that should have already been done.

I sent my whole allowance to Yele.com which is a boots-on-the-ground organization that has been trying to help the hapless Haitians for many years now. I hope no one out there is really worried about giving to brandname orgs because they are worried about how many cents on the dollar are spent on admin. If George Bush and Clinton (Bill) can work together on this, Smoking Jacketeers surely can.