Sep 142022
 

Yesterday, Lindsey Graham introduced a bill in the Senate to ban abortion at the federal level. This irritates me… but it doesn’t alarm me, because if they really wanted to pass it, they would wait until they have a majority in both houses, and some of them think that is going to be soon. This is political theater. And it is more likely to backfire than not. Also I need to give you all an update on James. the amputation has happened (he didn’t say anything about the process, so I’m going with “No news is good news.”) He is already confident that he made the right choice. Now the recovery begins.  Incidentally, I have an appointment myself today – just for an annual checkup.  Oh, and one other thing – the candidate running against Boebert is Adam Frisch.  I’m not hopefull of beating Buck or Lamborn, bothe of whom are well established, but I think Boebert might be beatable.  If you check Adam out, let us know what you think.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – Who will bear the pain?
Quote – Get ready. The war on inflation is about to get ugly…. Who will bear this pain? Not corporate executives. Not Wall Street. Not big investors. Not the upper-middle class. The draftees into the war on inflation will be — already are — lower-wage workers. As the economy cools due to interest rate hikes, they will be first to be fired as the economy plunges and the last to be hired. The Fed is obsessing about a “wage-price” spiral — wage gains pushing up prices — when it should be worried about a profit-price spiral.
Click through for full article. All of this could be avoided if we used a different benchmark for the economy than the stock market. Usng the stock market is a little bit like doctors using the health of peole’s genitals as an indicator of their overall health. Not really representative.

AP News – Ken Starr, whose probe led to Clinton impeachment, dies
Quote – Ken Starr, a former federal appellate judge and a prominent attorney whose criminal investigation of Bill Clinton led to the president’s impeachment and put Starr at the center of one of the country’s most polarizing debates of the 1990s, has died at age 76, his family said Tuesday. Starr died at a hospital Tuesday of complications from surgery, according to his former colleague, attorney Mark Lanier. He said Starr had been hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Houston for about four months.
Click through for full obit. Please don’t dance in the streets. It’s tacky. And if you have any Republican neighbors you could be putting yourself in harm’s way.

Food For Thought

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Apr 022022
 

The passing of Madame Secretary Madeleine Albright on March 23, 2022, at the age of 84 prompted me to wonder how best to pay tribute to her many history-making accomplishments.

President Bill Clinton first selected her as our U.S Ambassador to the United Nations and then in 1997 elevated her to Secretary of State, thus becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government.

While some people are said to wear their heart on their sleeve, Madame Secretary wore it on her chest as a brooch from her astonishing collection of pins.

Sec. Albright explains: “I clearly have always liked jewelry, but it had not occurred to me that they could, in fact, become part of diplomacy.  It all began with Saddam Hussein.”

As ambassador to the United Nations in 1994, she criticized and pressured Mr. Hussein to allow ongoing weapon inspections.  This prompted the state-controlled media in Baghdad to call her “an unparalleled serpent.”

The next time she met with Iraqi diplomats she bravely wore her magnificent gold serpent brooch.  (Although she admits she does not like snakes at all.)  She thereby transformed her brooch collection into her own personal semaphore which she expertly used to convey a message or a mood.

The media constantly asked her how high-level talks were going, so she decided to transform “Read my lips” to “Read My Pins” – which became the title of one of her best-selling books.

 

Originally, I had hoped to provide a detailed translation of her collection.  But since it numbers well over 200 brooches (most of them simple, inexpensive costume jewelry), it was clearly too much.

Suffice it to say that when she’s in a good mood or conveying high hopes, Albright would wear ladybugs, flowers, suns and hot-air balloons.  On bad days she’d sport spiders and carnivorous animals.  If she felt progress was slower than she wanted she’d wear a snail or maybe a turtle pin.  And if she was dealing with crabby people, she’d don a crab.

Albright had toyed with the idea of an exhibit of her pins, but several galleries in Washington, DC turned the idea down cold.  But the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC thought it had possibilities and curated a show that has since travelled to her alma mater (Wellesley), virtually every presidential library from FDR on and highlighted at the Smithsonian.

This is how a typical exhibit is showcased:

To view a wider variety of her pins I’ve divided them into categories – but with no further details, as it was just too overwhelming.  But you’ll easily pick out the gold serpent brooch that set her on this path.

I’ll note two unique ones: One of her favorites is the clay heart made by her five-year-old daughter that she wears every Valentine’s Day.  And the other is the “Shattered Glass Ceiling” that she wore when Hillary Clinton gave her acceptance speech at the 2016 DNC.

 

I hope you enjoy a small sampling of Madeleine Albright’s eclectic collection of brooches, arranged in alphabetical order by categories.

FAUNA

 

FLORA

 

MISCELLANEOUS

 

PATRIOTIC

 

RESOURCES

For more information on Sec. Madeleine Albright’s life and brooch collection, I suggest these sites, in no particular order:

Obituaries & A Tribute by Hillary Clinton

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/madeline-albright-dead-/2022/03/23/e527816e-8cf5-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/madeleine-albright-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/madeleine-albright-secretary-of-state.html

Brooches

https://readmypins.state.gov/

https://madmuseum.org/exhibition/read-my-pins

https://www.instyle.com/politics-social-issues/women-politics/madeleine-albright-pin-collection-meanings

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113278807

https://www.oprah.com/style/madeleine-albrights-pin-collection/all

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