Sharon’s Blog

The last place I expected to be on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was on an airplane, or even in an airport, but some times life has other plans.  My best friend’s father passed away, and I’m on my way to his memorial service, and while it’s only a scant 500 miles to Tucson, it’s two short-hop flights away on a day when all eyes are on air travel.

I awoke this morning to listen to the solemn reading of the names of those who perished on that terrible day, something I have done before in the ensuing years.  In fact, two years ago, I was there in person at Ground Zero on the anniversary date, looking at the eerie construction cranes as the rain poured down.  Today, there is a new memorial on that hallowed ground where so many died.  The years may pass, but the memories of that day are seared, permanently. 

The phone rang.  It was just before 6AM.  A somber voice on the phone commanded “turn on the television.”   My half-conscious response:  “what channel?”  The voice:  “Any one.  They’re all the same.”  As I fumbled for the remote to turn on the TV, my friend Laura explained that her husband Ted had taken the red-eye to New York and was arriving at a hotel in midtown Manhattan when word came over the radio that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.  He was standing out in the street when he phoned her.

I could see the billowing smoke on the TV screen while the news anchors tried to make sense of the image.  Then, the unthinkable happened.  6:03AM Pacific time.  While we were speaking, we watched the second plane fly into the second tower, and the world as we knew it was changed forever.

It was a day when no one could find the right words, a day when no one want to be alone, a day that redefined pain.  Each day, from then on, became divided into pre- and post-9/11.  Innocence, and innocence lost.  But the earth continues to rotate around the sun, and life hurries by.  My generation remembers where we were on November 22, 1963 when President John Kennedy was shot.  In the blink of an eye, there will be a generation that doesn’t remember 9/11 firsthand, and yet that generation will have grown up understanding “red level terror alerts,” no liquids on airplanes, full body xray scans at airports and phrases like “let’s roll,” all as a way of life rather than the result of one fateful day.

Thunderstorms over the Arizona desert cause massive turbulence.  The plane violently rocks and jolts, and I think about the four planes that were lost that day, and the people on them.  Did they know?  How much did they know?  When did they know—for an hour or only for an instant?  And, most of all, I wonder, what would I do?

I had a farm in Romania.  Literally and figuratively.  Literally, it was three parcels of undeveloped land that my grandfather deeded to my father.  Figuratively, it’s an invisible bond to a culture and a heritage I know little about and the inexplicable, unseen forces that seemed to be pulling me toward it.

The “undeveloped” part allowed me to make a claim for restitution on land that was nationalized in 1946 by the post-war Communist government of Romania.  It began as a lark, but it became so much more.

In 1993, two years after our father had passed away, my sister and I took our mother on a roots trip to Eastern Europe.  We visited Budapest and Vienna, and included a trip to Mom’s hometown of Munkacz (formerly Czechoslavakia, now Ukraine) and a side trip to Livada, just over the Hungarian border into Romania, where my father had been born.  Crossing the border, you arrive in Satu Mare, a bustling city with still-beautiful gardens and buildings.  As you drive up the country road toward Livada, known to my father by the Hungarian name Sárköz, time stops, and you’re transported back to the Romania my father left behind in 1938.  No traffic lights, bicycles and carts drawn by horses. 

Finding someone of a certain age who still spoke Hungarian led us to what had once been the family farm.   Curious, the locals began to fill the quiet residential street. There wasn’t much to see, just a mill that was processing grain that grew somewhere in the distance and a house that was being used as an office—was that the family house?  No one knew for sure.  A woman came forward saying that she owned the mill and wanted to buy the land from the government.  Could we help?  She carefully wrote out her name and address.  Then an apple-cheeked old woman wearing a babuska on her head came up to me and said in Hungarian, “I knew your grandfather, I prayed for him.”  That was it, and even while I doubted that what she said was true on the day in May, 1944 when the trains deported the Jewish community of Livada and the surrounding areas to the camps at Auschwitz, I did know that I was not done with this place.

It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire when my father was born.  I used to love to tell my friends that my father was from Transylvania—which is where Livada really is—because of the legendary Count Dracula.  Fast forward to 2005, and there I was again as part of a tour group that was exploring Romania by bus.  I noticed a lunch stop in Satu Mare on the tour itinerary and asked the tour leader if we could drive past my family’s farm.

So there I was holding the piece of paper on which Anna had carefully written out the address in 1993.  This time I found a bustling business that made building supplies like decorative cement blocks to make fences and curved roofing tiles.  It was not lost on me that I come from a long line of architects and home builders on both sides of my family.  Once again, I was asked about making a claim so that the owners of this thriving business could buy the land from me.

In preparation for the trip, I went through a file of my father’s papers and found fragile documents on thin, onion-skin paper, type-written and embellished in fountain pen.  I also found years of documentation of his and my uncles’ efforts to make restitution claims through both the U.S. and the Canadian (where my uncles lived) governments.   I made copies of the papers that looked important, and one night during the trip I asked our guide, Catalin, for his translation skills.  What he translated were deeds to specific parcels of land.

The return visit to the family farm fueled my interest in claiming the land, so when I got home in early November, I hit the internet in earnest.  Two weeks later, I hit paydirt—a law allowing foreign nationals to make claims for restitution on “undeveloped farmland.”  This law in question had already expired on September 30, 2005, but in the small print I found that it had been extended to the end of November.  I now had two weeks.

The U.S. Embassy in Bucharest forwarded a list of recommended attorneys, but none were based in the region where my claim would need to be made. One actually asked for a retainer of $10,000 in U.S. dollars for what I still considered a whim!

Then the inexplicable, unseen forces began to work their magic.  During the trip, our group met members of a youth organization called Oter, which is dedicated to bringing Judaism back to Romania.  The parents of these young people grew up under Communism with no religion, but their children are determined to reinstate their Jewish culture and its customs.  On our last night in Bucharest, the president of the organization joined us for dinner.  Online I discovered that Oter had a chapter in Satu Mare, so I sent an email, and within minutes, was connected with that chapter and an email with the name of the head of the Jewish community in Satu Mare:  a lawyer.  He was, and is still, not internet savvy, but he did have a cell phone, he spoke English and he has a sister in San Diego.  Unseen forces converging.

I called him late at night, which was the start of the day his time.  By the time I got to my office that morning, he had faxed a handwritten document in Romanian that I needed to have notarized giving him power of attorney to act on my behalf in making the claim.  It took an entire day and nearly 100 miles of driving to get all the documents together, and on November 29, 2005, one day before the law expired again, my claim was entered for three parcels of undeveloped farmland at the office of the magistrate in the town of Livada, county of Adrian, Romania.   

Time passed, to the point where I pretty much forgot about the claim except when someone asked for an update.  And I would tell them there simply wasn’t one.  Until one morning in May of 2010 when I received a phone call the sister in San Diego relaying a message.  The title to the land was mine, and the land was being sold.

After much prodding, I finally received an email answering my question about what I could do for the Jewish community of Satu Mare that would be meaningful, using the money.  The Decebal Street synagogue, built in 1893, needed a parochet, the curtain that covers the Aron Kodesh that holds the Torah scrolls.  Apparently, there once was one but it was gone, stolen long ago.  Would I like to take care of this? 

I was referred to a company in New York to make it with a dedication to my father and his family embroidered in the cloth.  I placed the order, and it hit me that I didn’t want to ship it to Romania.  Rather, I wanted to bring it there myself.

I also researched programs in Romania that would benefit from a donation and was referred to Children in Need, a program of the Social and Medical Assistance Department (SMAD) of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania, based in Bucharest.  After much correspondence, we identified a program that aids students who have aged out of the organization’s youth programs and are pursuing university studies despite financial hardships.  Ten university students were selected from the program, each with their own unique story, who would receive a small windfall to continue their education.  It made me wonder if they would feel like they won the lottery.  I certainly would.

My lawyer wanted to hold a celebration in the synagogue and bring in a rabbi and a klezmer band for the occasion.  I told him I would like to bring the parochet personally and attend the event, mutually settling on October 3, the Sunday following Sukkot.  This dedication would take place in the synagogue which is not used very often (for one thing it is very costly to heat in the winter).  In fact, the last time it was used in earnest was in May of 2004 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews of the area to Auschwitz.  As part of that commemoration, a Holocaust memorial on the grounds of the synagogue was dedicated.  My grandparents and my aunt and her husband and son were among those remembered that day.  How fitting that the next such event would memorialize them all.  On May 19, 1944, six trains with approximately 3300 persons departed for Auschwitz.  In total 18863 Jews were deported from the area. A total of 14440 Jews from Satu Mare were killed during the war. 

On September 29, 2010, I took off for Europe, carrying the curtain with the dedication in memory of my grandparents, father, uncles and aunt in my very overweight carryon.  I arrived the next morning in Frankfurt where a client was performing in a club that evening.   The next morning, I flew to Bucharest and on to Satu Mare, arriving at the tiny airport in the early evening.

Following the subdued Shabbat morning services held in a small prayer room, we repaired to the main sanctuary to hang the parochet.  It was very moving to see the large curtain I had carried dwarfed by the height of the room. 

Then I was taken on an excursion into the countryside.  First stop was Livada, aka Sárköz, which in the Hungarian of my father means “between the mud.”  The Romanian translation is more sublime:  Livada means “orchard.”  While the streets seemed more even and paved, the town looked essentially the same to me as it did in 1993 and 2005, though the building products factory appeared to have grown into a cottage industry.  This time, I didn’t knock on the door because I knew I couldn’t claim the land that had their factory on it, and they seemed to be doing well without owning the land on which they are operate their business.

The next day, the entire community came to the celebration.  The gentleman from the Children in Need program came in from Bucharest and presented me with a list of the students that are being endowed with a little background on each of them.  There were speeches and blessings and prayers from the Rabbi—after being acknowledged as the “sponsor,” I was coaxed into saying a few words too—followed by an hour of joyous music from a seven-piece group comprising five siblings called the “Is…Real Klezmer Band.”

The next morning I flew out by way of Bucharest to London, and as I got on the plane in Satu Mare, two women came up to me to thank me for the wonderful concert they had attended the day before.  Just recently I received letters from two of the students telling me what the money they received will mean to their education and their lives. 

I hope my father is smiling.  I certainly am.

I have been in mourning.  I now recognize the stages.  I’ve already passed through the anger phase and moved on to denial.  Now I’m hovering somewhere between bitterness and resentment, waiting and wondering when the churning in the pit of my stomach and the dull ache in my heart will subside into numbness and, finally, resignation.

At least no one died, nothing like that, except for that part of my soul that tried so hard to find the good in every bad situation..  It got damaged irreparably when it was savaged along with the notion that “this time” would be different.

That’s apparently not the way of the world.  The sharks still sense the blood in the water and circle for the kill.  My blood, and the blood of others, formed a fluid target.

Is it wrong to care passionately for something you believe in?  I guess so because it makes you appear vulnerable to people who approach life as blood sport instead of team play, and it sets you up for annihilation.  I’m not naïve enough to have thought we would all sit around the campfire with arms linked and sing Kumbaya, but I did believe in a moment when we would all share with great pride in what we would ultimately accomplish together.

That was not to be.  Some people don’t subscribe to those notions learned in the kindergarten sandbox:  Play fair.  Share.  Instead, I realize now that the swirling vortex that swallowed me whole did the same to others who aren’t equipped to share and also have the power to systematically eliminate everything and everyone that crosses their path so that they are the last ones standing.  They drank the Kool-Aid, and it made them feel invincible.  Me?  It nearly killed me. 

Does that sound angry?  Bitter?  Resentful?  Perhaps.  But it’s also profoundly sad to realize that the more you think things are changing, the more they remain the same.  The more I strive to be kind and to work hard, the more I become a target for those who don’t understand that you can thrive on passion and even inspire it in others, all without hurting anyone.  I am now just that much diminished for it.

The thing is that I know I will put myself out there again, and possibly even get kicked in the teeth again, because it’s what I do—it’s like breathing out and breathing in—and to do otherwise would force me to lower myself to the same level as the black-hearted perpetrators.  It would be something like letting the terrorists win, and I just cannot do that.  After all, they will inevitably be judged by powers higher than me, and I will only get to stand by on the sidelines and watch.  Helplessly.

            “I’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause I built my life around you,

            But time makes you bolder, even children get older,

            And I’m getting older too.

            Take my love, take it down,

            Climb a mountain and turn around,

            And when you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills,

            The landslide will bring you down.”

I learned to drink coffee at the Troubadour.  That’s the thought that popped into my head as I recently watched the film called “Troubadours” about the singer-songwriter era of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Much of the film was set in that hallowed venue, and I couldn’t help thinking about the coffee. 

There was a two-drink minimum at each show, and coffee was the least expensive drink on the menu, cheaper than Coca Cola and the alcoholic beverages I was way too young to drink.  So when you were spending your hard-earning money amassed from some menial summer job, coffee it was.

And while nursing two cups of pretty vile brew—it was a long time before I realized that coffee could taste way better than the stuff they served—I watched performances by the likes of Arlo Guthrie, The Byrds and Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys.

Imagine my surprise when I looked up at the stage and realized that one of the members of Linda Ronstadt’s Stone Poneys was my next door neighbor while growing up in suburban Los Angeles.  I used to hear him play his guitar long into the night when our bedroom windows faced each other without ever giving a thought to whether he played music to make a living or for the fun of it.  To me, music was already synonymous with life.  I slept with a transistor radio under my pillow and played my growing collection of vinyl albums long into the night.

The venerable Troubadour was also the first place where I saw a man who would go on the change my life–the Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen (see earlier blog entry….)  In the audience that night in 1972 was a man seated alone on what was then the elevated VIP section at stage left.  As I recall, the room was half-filled, and he was the only one seated in that special section.  Fearing that I might compromise his anonymity that night, he glared at me when my eyes caught his.  The look said “don’t you dare look at me.”  It was Bob Dylan.  And I’m pretty sure he too was drinking the coffee.

There’s a book I’ve read about called The Tyranny of Email:  The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox.  It details how electronic communication has taken over our lives, for better or worse.  Sure, it’s a major time saver and allows for prompt, efficient dialogue, but that is only true when the people you are reaching out to are willing to respond.

As a public relations professional, it has been my job (and curse) to contact people I don’t necessarily even know and convince them they should care about the client/event/subject I’m contacting them about.  “Back in the day,” it was easier to ambush someone on the phone, politely convince them to give up a minute or two of their valuable time and let you state your case.  It was pretty easy to determine if the outcome was positive, negative, on the fence or required more information to be sent along subsequent to the conversation.  When you hung up, you were clear as to whether the inquiry fell into the category of “yes,” “no” or “maybe,” and you could move on from there.

Today, email is stated as the preferred method for such communication, yet for something based on instant gratification, in my world it’s far from instant.  As one who receives at least 100 emails a day, I can only imagine how many a journalist who openly solicits such communication must receive, and I can also imagine how many of them go undigested or even unread altogether.  But my biggest frustration is the lack of common courtesy that could be resolved with a selection from a list of “three little words.” 

They don’t have to be the same three little words for everyone or every time, but three little words would let me know that I could put my outreach into one of my own three little categories of “yes,” “no” or “maybe,” and be able to move on. 

For those who can’t come up with three little words, here are a few suggestions by category that will suffice in getting me off your back for at least awhile:

Yes:

Works for me.

Set up interview

Is he/she available?

Maybe:

Got it, thanks (or the even shorter, tnx)

Not right now.

Send the CD.

No:

I’m not interested.

Not for me.

No go, sorry.

Too far away.

Or even more succinct:

Moved to Fiji.

Out of business.

Go to hell.

I’m sure there are more, but you get my drift.  This is the least I would hope for to replace that direct communication I once enjoyed on the phone (or even longer ago in person over lunch or drinks), getting to know the likes and needs of the person I’m pitching the story to.  Now I’m at the mercy of the tyranny of email, and it rules my life and makes me profoundly sad as I watch the “relations” portion of my work diminish while I yearn—with great anticipation—for just three little words.

This post was inspired by a magazine article I read on an airplane. 

I love to travel—more than most anything else—and the more remote and exotic the location the better.

I was born on the Jersey Shore—a great place to be FROM.

The first concert I went to was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.  A friend of my parents took me and his own kids because it was decided we were too young to go alone.  I saw the Beatles every year for the three years they played in Los Angeles.

Photography is my favorite hobby.  Politics is a close second.

I took the photograph of Leonard Cohen holding a banana on the cover of his “I’m Your Man” album.  Leonard has referred to it as my “most famous photograph.  Millions of people have it in their homes.”

I designed and sold a line of anti-Bush teeshirts to support John Kerry’s campaign for President in 2004.  When Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, I was one of the millions of people freezing their buns off on the Mall in Washington, DC.

Fleetwood Mac named their album “Rumours,” British spelling and all, during an interview that took place in my office.  A photo of me is in the collage on the sleeve.

I’ve become addicted to Sudoku.  Thank you Brianna.

I make a really great chicken chili.

I love to needlepoint.

I play a mean tambourine.

I should have been an interior designer.

I graduated Magna Cum Laude from UCLA with a degree in “Individual Field of Concentration.”  Depending on who I’m talking to, it’s in either in nuclear physics or basketweaving.

My boyfriend in college left me to marry Diana Ross.

I took the exam and got a radio operator’s license from the FCC so that I could become a disk jockey.

The late Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys was my friend.

I once attended the International Television Festival in Monte Carlo as the guest of Prince Albert of Monaco.

I co-produced the Hear ‘n Aid project, the heavy metal recordings, video and line of merchandise that raised $1.2 million for famine relief in Africa.

I was kicked out of the sixth grade choir for singing flat.

Movies I’ll always watch in the middle of the night:  “Singing in the Rain,” “Field of Dreams,” “Oceans 11” (the Rat Pack version).  Favorite author:  Isabel Allende.  Favorite Beatles song:  “Things We Said Today”

My hair really does grow this way.

I’ve found solace in writing, dating back to college when a journalism professor introduced me to stream of consciousness journal writing.  Today, as I drove back from a weekend away from home, I was desperate for my computer, or even a piece of paper and a pen to put down my thoughts on the sad passing of a great artist and good friend.

Ronnie James Dio died today.  He had fought stomach cancer valiantly for the past six months, and now he is at peace.  I consider myself one of the lucky ones who have many wonderful memories of times spent together, memories I will cherish for the rest of my life.

I met him when his wife Wendy contacted me about representing a new project Ronnie was putting together while on tour with Black Sabbath.  It was 1981, and she invited me to attend an upcoming Black Sabbath concert at the Forum in Los Angeles that was scheduled for some months away.  In the interim time, I expected she would forget about the invitation, but not Wendy.  She phoned periodically just to stay in touch, up until the week prior when she confirmed that tickets and backstage passes would be awaiting my arrival. 

I looked up the tour schedule to get an idea of what sorts of venues they were playing and noticed that they were appearing in San Bernardino the night before the Forum show.  In my experience, bands that live in Los Angeles would do their show in San Bernardino, do their required after show meet and greet and drive back to LA, returning at 2AM in the morning or later.  To my surprise, I arrived at my office at 10AM the morning of the Forum show to a ringing phone and Ronnie James Dio on the other end.  He was warm and friendly and told me he was looking forward to meeting me that evening.  When I asked him what he was doing up so early, he answered:  “I’m wallpapering the kitchen.”  I responded:  “Ronnie, I’m really looking forward to meeting you.” 

My favorite photo that I took of Ronnie.

Ronnie, Wendy and me last summer.

So I’m travelling with a client back east when my cellphone rings.  It’s a call from Los Angeles, so I think it might be important.   The voice on the other end informs me that I’m overdue for an appointment with the dentist. 

Taken aback, I begin to consider when I will have time to schedule an appointment before I realize that this is not my current dentist’s office on the line, but the one I fired more than two years ago and from which I even had my records transferred.  Perturbed, I demand to know why they are bothering me, wasting both my time and theirs.  There’s no satisfactory answer really.  I guess they thought they could trick me into coming back, so the only explanation is “it’s the economy, stupid.”

It’s hardly the first time I’ve received a random call that encourages me to spend money on things I either don’t need or don’t need right now.  Recession inspires us to put off purchases that are not urgent in order to keep up with the ones that are, and yet you can’t blame them for trying.  But at least they should be coming at you with offers you can’t refuse—a better deal on something you would eventually buy anyway might inspire you to fork up the money sooner rather than later—rather than a ploy designed to create confusion.

A friend recently pointed out the new sections at the market that contain markdowns—usually at least 50% off—for quick sale.  These are mostly items with imminent expiration dates, which make for good value if a ham sandwich or a box of donuts is in your immediate future.  There used to only be a section with day-old bread and baked goods, but now you can find these sections in the deli and meat departments as well.  Why?  Well, it’s the economy, stupid.

So now I have a dilemma, the opportunity, er, necessity to spend some money in order to keep an airline miles account—with enough miles already in it for an actual airplane ticket—from expiring.  I’m overwhelmed with a surprising variety of possibilities for qualifying purchases, but while I feel like a kid in a candy store, I really don’t need any of the things I can buy, at least not at the moment.  I think the state of the economy has left me with a new definition of the word “need.” In the not so distant past, this was hardly an issue to dwell on.  The credit card came out, and it was all done with very few brain cells expended.  But in this economic climate, it will take all the conviction I can muster to decide what makes the most sense to spend money on this week.  And oddly enough, it doesn’t feel like fun.  One thing I know for sure though:   it’s the economy, stupid.

I have started several blog entries that remain unfinished, perhaps a reflection on the general melancholy that is permeating everything. I did write one that looks back on the year—2009—that began with such promise and ended like a deflated balloon.  I suppose I could continue that theme into these first few weeks of the new decade, which appears to be coated with a thick malaise.  I’m beginning to think that the devastation in Haiti is a clear message to the rest of us that we don’t have it so bad, but so far it’s not registering.  Now I’m looking at the images from Peru, where I visited last summer, and seeing the devastation of the streets I walked in Aguas Calientes, the town below the sacred ruins of Macchu Picchu, I wonder if the world is actually coming to an end.

T

The orange building with the red roof on the right is (or maybe was) the hotel where I stayed in June.

For my part, I’ve become a Sudoku addict.  I admit it.  It’s my coping mechanism.  I used to stare at these jumbles of numbers with the simple instructions to fill in each line with numbers 1 through 9 in squares, clueless as to how to solve these puzzles.  There is no obvious strategy, but after solving my first one, I was hooked.  Now I just can’t get enough.  They make my brain feel like it’s on speed, and they force me to concentrate and focus and even relax.  I can feel the wheels turning in my mind, like the hamsters are actually pedaling.  And there are many days when a little mental exercise can be really important.  Completing a puzzle before heading for work can make my entire day, and I’m a sucker for that kind of ego boost.   

I was travelling recently, and they sell dozens of Sudoku (and other puzzle) books at the airport.  I couldn’t resist.  I’m working on my second paperback book of puzzles.  I do them in ink.  I can’t help it.  There’s only one correct answer, so when I screw up, there’s no going back to fix the mistakes.  I just leave it and go on to the next one, like that proverbial pile of crumpled papers I pitch into the wastebasket.  Being able to start all over is essential to the process.

Which brings me to Conan O’Brien, who is figuring out the starting over process.  After weeks of constant scrutiny and upheaval during which time he may have done the best and most creative work of his career, I know he will land on his feet because, as he said on his last broadcast of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, “if you’re willing to work hard and you’re kind, good things will happen to you.”  I’m making that my motto for 2010.

My very tall inspiration for 2010

I’m looking back on a year that began with such promise.  Hope and anticipation were palpable commodities.  There would be a new administration in Washington and a new attitude on every street corner.  So now I wonder:  what the hell happened?

As it has come time to review what there is to be grateful for, it’s a tougher sell than usual.  Last year ended on such a low note that there appeared to be nowhere to go but up.  Instead, the decline got worse, more bad news, more job losses, more desperation.  So many empty storefronts, For Lease signs on office buildings and going out of business sales.  It was Bill Cosby who used to say “don’t challenge ‘worse’—it will turn around and bite you on the ass,” and, in this case, he was prophetic. 

Personally, I awoke in 2009 (in what feels like an eternity ago) in the South Asian country of Myanmar where tyranny and oppression are a way of life, but the people there still hold out hope for a better tomorrow.  If that isn’t reason enough for optimism, there was that inauguration of Barack Obama, where three million people stood as one on the frozen mall in front the U.S. Capitol to witness history in the making.  Perhaps I was in the minority of those who knew that eight years of mistakes would not be undone in eight (or now 11) months, but I guess there are more of those than I thought who expected major change for minor effort.  So hope has gone out the window, squandered by promise that didn’t materialize in so many ways, and was replaced by a new brand of cynicism.  And I’ll admit it—I’ve bought back in. 

After all, this has been the year of deficit spending, and the few highs now appear to have been nothing more than distractions from the pervasive realities of a world that is changing faster than I can ever remember it doing.  There are things I barely recognize, like my newly-minted dependence on my Blackberry and the fact that my landline telephone rarely rings except for automated solicitation calls.  The lovely, colorful holiday cards with the hand-penned signatures that used to decorate my mantel this time of year have been replaced by E-Cards that talk and sing in the most annoying fashion (easily becoming one of my top five pet peeves) and disappear at the mere click of “delete.”  Even the invitations to infrequent holiday gatherings have been delivered via Evite rather than a simple, written email or (OMG) a personal phone call.  And—don’t get me started—even socializing with friends and dating itself have been relegated to the impersonality of the internet.  If there are no longer attendants in parking lots, is there a reason to expect that there should be anyone at the other end of the telephone either?   And if I succumb to the temptation of working from home, what will keep me from answering my emails all day while never getting out of bed?  Certainly not the chance of running into anyone I know while still in my pajamas. 

Everything is continuing to become computer- rather than human-driven.  It isn’t enough that jobs have been eliminated by the ailing economy, so many more of them have been eliminated by building a seemingly better mousetrap, putting human contact at a premium on so many levels.  And I fear the consequences. 

So what is there then to look forward to in 2010, the start of a new decade?  I wish I had a list, a really long list.  It’s really sad to me when the most upbeat, positive thing I can say going into this new year is “at least I have my health,” but at least I still do (while health care for all is still being debated and negotiated and compromised on).  And if I should fall ill, I can always look forward to the comfort of my day being brightened by E-Card or two.  Cynicism delivered at the touch of a button as I click ‘post.”