Mothers Speak about War and Terror

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Culture Shock Co-morbid with Bureaucratitis

Welcome Home!

Since 1989, I’ve made many two- to three-month-long forays “back home” to KZN from California. After my most recent foray unexpectedly extended from three to six months, I suffered a dose of culture shock co-morbid with a dizzying dose of, well, let’s call it bureaucratitis.
Culture shock is a state of critical assessment, psychological discomfort, even alienation that follows the initial euphoria a traveler experiences with immersion into exotic places, people, and things. It has an incubation period of three to four months in the unfamiliar or foreign place. It’s neither contagious nor terminal and the traveler slowly adjusts to and accepts her new circumstances.
Bureaucratitis is an acute state of anxiety, high blood pressure, and disorientation caused by reluctant visits to a local municipality or post office. Bureaucratitis worsens with an impending visit to the Department of Home Affairs.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Comrades Marathon

"Something there is doesn't love a wall"

June 10, 21,500 registered competitors ran the 90.184 km (56 mile) Comrades Marathon. This year’s race, the 93rd, was a “down run,” meaning runners started at Pietermaritzburg’s City Hall. Most of the route follows what was once Old Main Road.

Leaving the city, runners travel along Polly Shorts (Ashburton), through Camperdown and Cato Ridge, past what was once my home (see red print on map), along Harrison Flats, up Inchanga Hill… well, see the map for the full route that finishes at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

“If you think you are too small to make a difference...try sleeping with a mosquito in the room.” –Dalai Lama

I've started another blog.... read a post from it: Mosquitoes

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

What is that thing? Phones through the ages...

What is that thing? Updated edition:
As a Boomer, I'm fascinated with time...and aging...and where "we, the people" are heading (I promise I won't say, "to hell in a hand basket"). I'm fascinated with up-and-coming generations, too.
Stephen Colbert's Millennial Tutorial: Pay Phone hit all the right notes. Enjoy!

Previous edition:
I grew up in South Africa on a “guest farm,” the equivalent, in the U.S., of a “dude ranch.” In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this guest farm had a ‘call box,’ a public phone set on one wall of a 4 x 4 room with a door and a window. This phone, number X03, looked something like the one above (taken at Pt. Reyes in 2014) in that it had a handset connected with cable to a “box” and a slot for coins. The one above gets a dial tone. The vintage, all-black, heavy plastic version in South African, however, had a crank-style handle that, when wound round and round, alerted an operator in the “telephone exchange” three miles away. The operator responded and “put through” the call after the caller dropped the requisite funds into the slot.

Today, I use an iPhone 6 (I don’t recommend this model) that, besides calls, allows me to Facetime my grandkids in Texas, Skype family in South Africa and Europe, send emails, access the Internet, watch movies, and read library books. None of this existed even as concepts in the 50s and 60s.

Progress. Amazing. Particularly for a Boomer.

One year later...

It has been more than one year since my last post! A lot has happened since then. To transition to today, let's review "the good old days"...before Mr. Trump was president. Remember the UK Guardian quote from the article, "Trump camp says persona is 'an act' as it woos GOP insiders"

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 65% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Republican frontrunner.
However, they [newly hired Trump campaign staffers Paul Manafort and Rick Wiley] insisted that once voters got to know the real Trump, as opposed to the public face he has presented while campaigning and while hosting the NBC reality show The Apprentice, they will warm to him. He said that person was just an act.

Hmmm, I'm not feeling warmer toward the prez. The "act" is getting mighty old....Let's see how long the Trump Show can go on....

Friday, April 22, 2016

Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror: Forays into US Culture: "...persona is 'an act'..."

Forays into US Culture: "...persona is 'an act'..."

It should not be a surprise to anyone who reads this blog that this writer is not a fan of Hilary Clinton, her worldview, her politics, her campaign-style, nor of her myriad personae. (So, if you are a fan, be forewarned: albeit humor is my intention you might not find this post humorous.)
While I am not a fan of Trump as president I am a fan - in very small doses - of Trump's role as twisted entertainer highlighting a bizarre nomination process. And, to riff off a quote from the UK Guardian: "Trump camp says persona is 'an act' as it woos GOP insiders"

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 65% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Republican frontrunner.
However, they [newly hired Trump campaign staffers Paul Manafort and Rick Wiley] insisted that once voters got to know the real Trump, as opposed to the public face he has presented while campaigning and while hosting the NBC reality show The Apprentice, they will warm to him. He said that person was just an act.

...They insisted to attendees that Clinton’s negatives were far harder to overcome than Trump’s. Clinton is currently viewed negatively by 56% of voters according to the same poll. Notably, Manafort referred to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” within the briefing, using the nickname that Trump bestowed upon her.

"Crooked Hillary"?
So far in my drive to compile a collection of Hillary personae photographs (all these come from the UK Guardian) I have not found a specific photo presenting Hillary as Crooked but I found many Hillary personae. Here they are: