Category Archives: Autobiography

Celebrations

Why do I dislike celebrations of all kinds? Because they are artificial and designed to manipulate the participants. I am anti-social, happy to be solitary and disconnected. ‘Tis a guilty pleasure that must not be over-indulged.

Aging Matinee Idol

When I was sixteen, my father took me to a sort of night club which featured an aging Chanteuse with very drooping boobs. She was too pathetic to be gross in the mind of a sixteen year old, but I have never been able to figure out what possessed the regular clientele to patronize that dive. It was obviously a going concern and my father knew what to expect.

Archie Rice in “The Entertainer,” as played by Lawrence Olivier is a male version. Poor Donald is the 21st Century version–a has-been matinee idol strutting across the stage.
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Germans in the U.S.

When we arrived in Los Angeles in 1949, the first thing my mother’s uncle, our sponsor said was “No German is spoken in this house.” At eight years old, I was not bothered and learned English in a couple of months over the summer. So, when school started at Saint Cecilias, I did not miss a grade. We had already learned cursive, numbers were the same and the only read mystery was why they were collecting nickels to buy Chinese babies. Nickels could be got by returning empty bottles to the grocery store. I was, you might say, acculturated quickly.
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Attention Span

Now in my 79th year I find that many things just go on too long. An hour long video about the Queen of England proved tedious after about 15 minutes. A whole New Yorker article just cannot be read. I keep feeling like I am running out of time.

In three weeks we will vote to right the Senate.

I was educated by nuns.

First there was the French order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Victoir. After that the Ursulines, a cloistered order that practiced silence except for instruction and the reading of scripture. And finally I chose the Sisters of Charity, an order founded by a married woman with children, for my college education. Perhaps that is why the subservient Amy Coney Barrett is so offensive. What self-respecting woman would accept a job from an imbecile?