My Brother Ron

 

I haven't posted anything here in more than two years. That's a shame. It's not like I don't have things to say. I stopped writing regularly about ten years ago when I became more and more upset with the state of our politics and, standing back, viewed my pondering as an exercise in howling at the moon. It's gotten worse. 

However, my brother from another mother, Ron Levitus, died last Saturday. Ron was 76. Sunday was my first day on Earth without him. Ron had lived with Alzheimers since his late 60's. It's hard to keep track, but I remember that his 70th birthday party was particularly poignant because none of us knew how much longer he would be with us, cognitively and/or physically.

The family asked me to speak at Ron's funeral. It was an honor I could not refuse, even though I knew what I was about to go through. I spent Sunday drafting my remembrance. I sobbed on and off throughout the day. As noted in my remarks, I didn't consider it a eulogy. It was a personal tribute. 

When I was in the middle of drafting, I was reminded by Ron and my rabbi, R. Cohen, that there were a lot of speakers scheduled for the funeral and I should keep it to three to four minutes. I agreed to do so. On Monday, I informed the Rabbi Cohen that I was at six minutes. "After 73 years, I'm taking an extra two minutes." He advised me to "talk fast and don't cry". He asked for my draft so he wouldn't be duplicative of my remarks, a legitimate concern given the amount of time the three of us had spent together. 

I sent Rabbi Cohen my draft. Shortly thereafter, I received a text back. "Sam. This is absolutely beautiful. I would not change a thing. And you can speak slowly and cry. There will be a box of Kleenex on the bimah. Just save some for me. ❤️" It was the nicest thing he'd ever said to me, and that includes calling me a mensch during his sermon at Phil's Bar Mitzvah.

I went seven and a half minutes. I left out the story about Ron costing me a lot of money at a Vegas blackjack table by drawing on 15 when the dealer showed a 6. I left out the story about the time the press pass I finagled from the Vikings for a game Ron and I attended by claiming to be a blogger (with a telephoto lens) gave us entrance onto the field and, later, into the locker room. When we were busted (who knew you couldn't bring cameras into the locker room?), we bolted from the rest of the press and nearly made it through the labyrinth of the Dome before being stopped by a guy with a walkie talkie and a golf cart. He reported back to whoever was looking for us that we had a press pass and let us go. It was a great escape. 

I left out a lot. Because you can't fit 73 years into 7 and 1/2 minutes.

Here are my remarks, my remembrance, my Ron Stories. 

Good afternoon. My name is Sam Stern. I’m Uncle Sam to Ari, Morgan, and Michelle. And, by way of the introduction I always used with Ron and a third party, Ron knew me since my mother was pregnant with me. 

This is not a eulogy. Yesterday, after notifying the Minnetonka Rotary that our only honorary member had passed away, I received a condolence email describing Ron as a “kind man”. As far as eulogies go, that pretty much sums up Ron. All the rest is commentary.

I’m here this afternoon, for as long as I can stand it, to tell Ron Stories. Ron’s brother Stephen Levitus is the only person on Earth who’s known Ron longer than me, and he’s quarantining from COVID in Los Angeles. I have nothing on Ron’s first 3 years, but I have a lifetime of memories from thereon. Ron taught me a lot over the years, and I’m going to use Ron Stories to describe those lessons.

Ron taught me to pick helpful allies. Our fathers were partners in the trucking business in Chicago and moved their families and business to the Twin Cities in 1954. We lived next to each other in St. Louis Park, and it often felt like one big family. I was the eldest Stern son; Ron was like a big brother. As a big brother, he picked on me and gave me a hard time when I picked on my kid brother, Jordy. Eventually, I figured out that if I ratted Ron out to Stephen, the oldest of us all, Stephen would pick on Ron until he left me alone. A helpful ally.

Ron taught me that educating oneself could be an independent study. While I was reading My Weekly Reader, Ron had a subscription to Popular Mechanics. I remember seeing the magazine in his bedroom and realizing why Ron was so smart. He would have been about 10 and he was actively engaged in feeding his curiosity.

Ron taught me how to pin the needle on a speedometer. In the summer of 1969, Ron and I were given the task of driving to Chicago to bring back my mom and his grandparents who had all been visiting family. Ron was home from Film School at NYU. He was heavily bearded, had very long curly hair, and was the epitome of 1960’s counterculture. We didn’t leave the Twin Cities until late at night and had to stop at the Embers in White Bear Lake to see Ron’s girlfriend. Hanging out with a bearded, long-haired, NYU film school student at an Embers near midnight made me feel very mature. We drove to an exit for a Wisconsin State Forest, where we decided to pull over and sleep in the sleeping bags we’d brought. We drove into the pitch-black environment, parked the car, got ready to camp, heard growling noises that weren’t from St. Louis Park, packed up, and drove away. 

We ended up camping out with sleeping bags in the field behind an Interstate rest stop, wary of all the truckers who were spending the night because Easy Rider was a current movie and the hippies and truckers in that movie didn’t mix well. 

That morning, Ron demonstrated that if you drove faster than the highest number on the speedometer, your speed would increase but the needle would get stuck on the little nub at the 100-m.p.h. mark. He pinned the needle. 

Ron also taught me on that trip not to panic. Twice.

The first time was when a “Pay Toll 1 Mile” sign appeared and the car was filled with smoke from Ron’s, and only Ron’s, joint. I was sure the toll booth guy was going to report us to the highway patrol. Not Ron. I won’t repeat Ron’s expletive, but the windows came down, the fans were set to max, the speedometer was no longer pinned, and Ron cruised through the toll booth transaction like we were on our way to Bible camp.

He also taught me not to panic when we arrived at my Nana’s Chicago condo. We brought our backpacks and sleeping bags up to the 25th floor. Mom and Nana gushed over us, so proud that we had driven by ourselves all the way to Chicago. My mom took the sleeping bags to a bedroom to air out and Ron and I stayed in the living room, admiring the view of Lake Michigan. All of a sudden, my mother cried out from the bedroom “There’s grass in the sleeping bags!” That was it. My life was over. My mom had discovered that I was in the presence of marijuana and probably thought I was an addict. Not Ron. He gave me a “be cool, don’t panic” look. What Ron realized was that my mom was referring to the grass from the field behind the rest stop where we had slept because he knew that he had not put his stash in the sleeping bag.

Ron taught me to be flexible. After graduating from film school, Ron worked for a New York production company. One day, he was scouting for locations for the famous “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball” commercial for Alka-Seltzer. He went to Katz’s Deli where Ron described the commercial to Mr. Katz and asked if his company could rent the deli for the shoot. As Ron told it, Mr. Katz listened and then said, “Ron, you seem like a smart Jewish boy. Tell me. Why would I want people to think they’ll need Alka-Seltzer if they eat at my restaurant?” Being flexible, Ron found another location.

Ron taught me not to be judgmental. As our families grew, they remained one in many ways. We marvel at how four generations of Levituses and Sterns can share such a strong familial bond. Each year, our families gather on the evening before Thanksgiving and, invariably, grab the annual Levitus/Stern family photo. One year, Ron was fussing with his camera, unable to figure out how to put it on a timer so he could be in the shot. The wait was irritating me, and I used my own camera for the image. On the way home, I commented to Deb that I didn’t understand what had just happened. Ron was a professional photographer. How could he not know how to do something as simple as set a timer? Shortly thereafter, we became aware of Ron’s early onset diagnosis and I realized that the camera issue was a manifestation. I still feel guilty for getting upset about his fumbling and being so judgmental.

I have many more lessons from Ron (ask me at Shiva about the trip to Vegas), but I’m going to wrap up to give others time to speak. 

 I’ll end with the fact the Ron taught me that a lifetime of love and friendship hardwires emotions. Whenever I visited Ron at the memory care center, I shuddered at the prospect that he would not recognize me. But when Ron saw me standing at the glass entrance from across the communal living room, there was always a big smile and hand clapping as he waited for me to come into the facility. If he could, he would get up to joyfully greet me. I realized that, even if more than 70 years of details were gone, he recognized our connection and that our aura was one of love and inseparability.

Yesterday was the first day in my life without Ron. Except that’s not really true. He left Deb and me with a sister, three nieces, a couple of nephews, two grand-nephews and two grand nieces. His legacy of kindness, and devotion, and loyalty, and dignity will continue to serve as a guidepost from my life-long teacher.

Enough Already

 While lunching with Charlie Leck, who first inspired me to blog 15 years ago, I committed to returning to this site to ponder on the prairie. As I told Charlie, I gave up regular writing because it felt like I was coming across like little more than an angry old man. The shoe fit; I chose to wear it in private.

We are, however, at a point in our history where my, and your, silence in the face of concerted efforts to undermine the rule of law and our democratic institutions cannot be justified. This country is sliding towards fascism, where politicians are recognizing that minority viewpoints can rule the day if enough effort is put into castigating and silencing truth tellers by engaging in scapegoating, fear-mongering, and lying.

No where is this more evident than the GOP response to the 37 count indictment of Donald Trump for alleged violations of the Espionage Act. In the face of a detailed description of various illegal conduct, corroborated by the testimony of Trump's attorneys, photographs, and tape of Trump acknowledging an awareness of the wrongfulness of his actions, GOP lawmakers are railing against a "weaponized Justice Department" and calling for shutting down the investigation and the trial of Trump and the defunding of the FBI.

Having long abandoned any sense of irony, these defenders of an allegedly treasonous former president "forget" their calls to "lock her up" in response to Hilary Clinton's use of a private server for government business. Then, the GOP were experts in the law of safeguarding government secrets, regularly spinning horrific hypotheticals about the consequences of a foreign government accessing Clinton's secure server. Eight years later, Trump's storage of the country's most critical Defense secrets in banker boxes in publicly accessible locations in Mar-a-Lago, and Trump's actual sharing of Top Secret documents, as evidenced in authorized tape recordings, is a "Democratic hatchet job". 

Also lost in the GOP angst is that their cult leader could have saved himself by merely responding as Mike Pence and Joe Biden did when government documents were found under their control. Just return the documents. There would have been no stomach to pursue the matter further. Rather, as described in the indictment in reliance on Trump employees' testimony, Trump engaged in a series of efforts to retain the documents, hide the documents, and, unsuccessfully, destroy the documents in order to avoid their discovery during ongoing investigations.

Reports I've read suggest that Trump retained the documents because he won't accept that he is no longer the president of the United States. I am not so quick to dismiss the possibility that Trump's behavior was based on a belief that the documents in his possession might be monetized. That is more in keeping with his history and, coupled with his string of surviving a long series of crises by whipping his adoring public into a frenzy to the point that applying normal standards, like examining documents and taking witness testimony, is politically inexpedient, a calculated risk for Trump.

It's clear that truth is not an obstacle for Trump and that getting 40% of the U.S. population to believe that the sky is green has served him well. But there is no excuse for those seeking to lead this nation after 2024 to repeat what they know to be falsehoods rather than speak truth to the cult. 

The investigations of Trump are not witch hunts. Rather, they've resulted in the successful prosecution of several witches. Trump is being investigated by the Justice Department for Espionage Act violations and fomenting an insurrection against the United States of America because Trump engaged in conduct so egregious that to not pursue the investigations would undermine our criminal justice system. Trump is being investigated by the State of Georgia for election interference in 2020 because his recorded phone call evidences unlawful pressure on elected officials and criminal intent. Trump is being investigated by the State of New York because he falsified business records and took illegitimate tax deductions and got caught. 

GOP politicians know all this but rather than call it out for what it is, legitimate enforcement of Federal and State criminal codes, they go along with the subterfuges and, justifying the ends, engage in means that rival the crowd control successes of Nazi Germany. I was castigated in 2015 on social media when I pointed out that Trump's campaign, based on scapegoating immigrants and Muslims and repeating falsehoods vigorously on a regular basis until accepted as fact, was taken right out of Joseph Goebbels' playbook. I knew I was right in 2015; I'm not surprised that the technique was woven into Trump's governing when it bore such fruit from the outset.

According to Wikipedia, a "big lie" (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda technique. The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his book Mein Kampf (1925), to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Sound familiar?

Enough already. It's time, way past time, for our elected politicians, would be elected politicians, media moguls and talking heads, and blog and podcast purveyors to recognize that truth, justice, and the American way is not just a slogan for a super hero in the Fifties. The pursuit of truth and justice has been a bedrock of our democracy and sacrificing both for perceived electoral success brings high, unthinkable costs. I'm willing to give Trump the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, though it takes much restraint to do so. Trump's GOP sycophants show no such restraint when they seek to burn down the criminal justice system because their idol faces a trial where facts, not politics, will decide the outcome.

2021 Holiday Greetings from Meadow Breeze Farm

(Trigger Warning: Grumpy Old Man Authored)

       Looking back on the past year, it is clear that my hope and my optimism for a better 2021 expressed on everyone’s behalf in last year’s Holiday Letter were not fully realized. It would be easy to spend the next few paragraphs ranting at the faux constitutional scholars and matchbox-licensed immunologists who refuse to get vaccinated for reasons that do not outweigh the societal consequences of their stubbornness (or make rational sense). In reality, nothing I write here is going to make a difference to anyone so concerned with their personal freedom and/or so confident in their online research that they’ll take direction from me. The rest of us are just going to have to let Nature run its course. 

On a lighter note, 2021 offered much to be thankful for. The Stern Clan grew by one when Molly and Phil’s daughter Flora was born in January. Theo has been a loving big brother, quickly adjusting to graciously sharing the kvelling spotlight. While the pandemic has made it difficult to see the Minnesota grands as often as we’d like, we’ve managed to spend some quality time over the holidays and Deb has been lucky enough to babysit Flora a couple of times a week. Flora appears to share her brother’s love of books and definitely shares his love of the horses running around the farm. Theo is in second grade in a Spanish Immersion school in St. Louis Park. 

In June, the James Gang made its second annual extended visit to Minnesota and Deb and I were lucky to share two months of quality time with Bennett, Miles, and Lucy (and Ellie and Matt). Lots of time was spent on the tree swings Deb set up and on Penny Pop Pop, the pony we bought last winter for the Grands to ride. The Grands loved playing outside, an impossibility in Phoenix in the summer. The dogs and cats and horses and sandboxes and pastures and hiking trails made Meadow Breeze the second happiest place on Earth, albeit safer than the claimant of that title. The visit was too short, but came to a necessary end so Bennett could return home to start pre-school.

If 2020 was the year where nothing happened, 2021 was the year where not much happened. For the most part, Deb and I hunkered down on the farm. I continued to work remotely, venturing into my urban office about once a week. We were thrilled to have law school friends Steve and Judy Berman stop by the farm for a few days in August on their drive home to Virginia after visiting San Francisco.

       We were able to resume traveling, primarily to visit family. I visited my dad and stepmother in Yuma for the first time in more than a year in March as soon as we were all vaccinated. I returned to Yuma in November for Dad’s 93rd birthday. Deb flew to Arizona later in the month and spent her birthday with Ellie, Matt, and the Arizona Grands. In August, I attended my nephew’s previously postponed wedding in Bethesda, Maryland, spent time with other nephews and nieces in town for the celebration, and had an emotional reunion lunch with beloved college classmate Richard Armstrong. In September, I flew to Napa for business and used the opportunity to have dinner with my cousins at Coppola’s winery in Geyserville.

       Deb remains happily retired and finds herself engaged full time running the farm and helping care for our grandchildren. She’s on horseback as much as time permits and manages the Stern menagerie, now consisting of two dogs, four cats, six boarded horses and four of our own horses, including Peppa Pony, a sweet new pony for the Grands. In her “spare time”, Deb maintains her tradition of creating gorgeous gardens all around the farm.

       Bridge Law Group’s practice continues to grow, keeping me busy and helping time pass more quickly. I'm grateful that I work with a group of dedicated, smart professionals who have figured out how to thrive and take care of clients' needs under such challenging circumstances. My volunteer work with TruStone continued to take a considerable amount of time. In (or, perhaps, despite) my 11 years on the Board, the credit union has grown from $647,000 in assets to just shy of $4 billion. My tenure as a TruStone Board member was extended for another 3-year term in April and I was re-elected to serve as the Chair of the TruStone Financial Foundation. The Foundation received a $1 million donation from the credit union at the end of 2020, making it possible to have a serious impact with grants to nonprofits in the communities served by TruStone. I still try to have a camera in hand whenever possible and was honored to be awarded the cover of the 2022 TruStone Calendar with an image I captured one-handed through an open passenger window while driving 70 m.p.h. outside of Gallup, New Mexico. 

       Like everyone, Deb and I have pandemic fatigue. However, we’re smart enough to realize that this is the new reality and, whether or not we like it, complacency is not an option. We hope to be able to return to some version of normalcy in 2022, a real possibility if everyone does their part and follows medical experts’ advice (just like they ultimately do in the ICU).

       Stay safe, get vaccinated, and have a happy and healthy New Year!

2020 Holiday Greetings from Meadow Breeze Farm

WHERE to begin? 2020 has not been the successful launch of the roaring new decade we all hoped for back in January. We’ve been challenged in ways that are still hard to fathom. We’ve been forced to look inward and ask if we are up to the task of modifying our behaviors in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We appreciate many of life’s simple pleasures, like an ample supply of toilet paper, and wonder if we’ll take all-day breakfast at McDonald’s for granted again if and when it returns. Deb and I join millions of involuntarily separated family members settling for Facetime and Zoom conference connections with our grandchildren. It’s like a post-apocalyptic novel, right down to the killer virus and the egomaniacal president, but, hey, at least my car is getting two weeks to the gallon.

    Travel in 2020 included San Francisco in February for a family reunion, Scottsdale in March to see the James Gang, and Delano, Long Lake, Maple Plain and Minneapolis during the rest of the year.

    Phil, Molly, and Theo (6) moved to Minnetonka to be closer to Phil’s and Theo’s schools and to have more room for Theo’s sister, due to arrive in early January. Phil teaches fifth grade in St. Louis Park. Theo is in first grade in the Spanish Immersion program at recently renovated Cedar Manor (where I went to kindergarten) when he’s allowed to attend class in person. Molly continues to work remotely for AFS Intercultural Programs. We’re excited that the family lives much closer now and look forward to being able to resume the weekly visits that ended with everything else.

    Ellie, Matt, Bennett (4), Miles (2), and Lucy (2) came to Minnesota at the end of April to quarantine on the farm. They did not return to Phoenix until mid-August, giving Deb and me an extraordinary amount of time to spend with the James Gang. The Grands had a magical summer, spent mostly outdoors since constant 114° weather was not an issue. The farm provided all kinds of entertainment and wonderment for the Grands, including pony riding on Trixie Trot Trot, playing with a litter of kittens born in May, and walks on the Luce Line.  Saying “goodbye” in August was probably the hardest part of the pandemic since it’s not clear when we’ll all be together again. On the other hand, we had almost four months to observe my daughter’s and son-in-law’s nurturing and patience as parents and know the Grands are thriving.

    Deb and I celebrated our 40^th anniversary in November with, of course, a Zoom party with the “kids” and the Grands. Deb retired completely this year, deciding not to pick up occasional shifts at Hennepin HealthCare once the James Gang returned to Arizona. She continues to be a whirlwind of activity, never slowing down in her roles of grandma, farm manager, ranch hand, gardener, equestrian, homemaker, devoted friend, and loving wife. There are now nine horses to care for on the farm, including the newest addition, Penny Pop Pop, a Halflinger pony acquired for the Grands after Trixie Trot Trot succumbed to old age. There’s also two dogs and five cats. There’s never nothing to do. 

    I’ve been working remotely 99% of the time since March 17^th. We’ve stayed busy at Bridge Law Group and it’s hard to believe that the firm has practiced apart from one another for more than eight months. We all have a wonderful working relationship and manage to stay connected through thrice weekly Zoom conferences. Besides practicing law, I’m celebrating my tenth year on the board of TruStone Financial Credit Union and serving my second term as chairman of the board of the TruStone Financial Foundation. In my spare time, I’m still a photographer.

    We look forward to being able to congregate with our friends and family in person before too much longer. We hope and pray that you all stay safe and take solace in your ability to rise to the challenges forced upon us, managing to survive, or thrive, in spite of all the strangeness. Have a joyful, healthy, safe holiday season and save me a hug. I miss them.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year!

Sam & Deb

Living with the End in Mind

As my FaceBook friends know, I have been supportive of the work of the End in Mind Project, a nonprofit founded by MPR journalist Cathy Wurzer in furtherance of her work with the late Bruce Kramer. My involvement started out as a volunteer photographer, memorializing events hosted by Cathy and giving me the opportunity to repeatedly receive the message of living life to the fullest at each of life's stages.

Cathy and the organization encourage us to live more and fear less. Inevitably, we all die. Communicating with loved ones and friends about how we want to face the inevitable, while still an unscheduled certainty, frees us to celebrate the lives and relationships we have right up until when we don't.

The last few weeks have sharply focused the need for the lessons of the End in Mind Project. Rather than being some amorphous concept that we'll deal with when we have time, Death has come calling globally in the form of Covid-19. Death teases us, leaving us to wonder if we will be part of the 40% likely to become infected, part of the 20% of the infected who experience serious health problems, or among the 3% of the virus' hosts who do not survive.

The reality of the situation we find ourselves in, forced to self-isolate, unable to carry on normal day-to-day activities like going to school or movies or restaurants, and clueless about if and when things will ever be "normal" again, gives considerable pause. It's as if we are in a perpetual backwards day and the concept of living more and fearing less seems other worldly.

Somewhere around the age of 8, Ian Fleming conveyed a life lesson that I've taken to heart for 60 years. He included a haiku in You Only Live Twice:

You only live twice
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face.


Over the years, I've had different thoughts about the meaning of the poem. But today, as we're all looking Death in the face, I accept the lesson as an admonishment not to waste this second life.

I have no way of knowing if I am going to survive this pandemic but I refuse to wallow in anxiety and self-pity waiting to find out. Life is much different than it was two months ago. But it is life.

While taking recommended steps to reduce my risk of being infected, I am not disassociating from everything dear to me. I can keep up with family and friends on social media and by phone or video conferencing. While I'd prefer meeting over a vodka with extra olives at the Monte, electronic discourse and full pours at home will suffice for now. My Amazon Prime, HBO, Showtime, Disney+, AppleTV, and Netflix options are overwhelming. I'm finally getting around to reading James Clavell's Gaijin. I've put that off forever because once I'm done, there are no Clavell chronicles left to read. Under the circumstances (the part about not knowing if I'll survive), it's time.

Let's all take Cathy Wurzer's lead and find ways to live as fully as possible in the face of adversity and notwithstanding the ultimate inevitability. Go to www.endinmindproject.org for information on the nonprofit and its work, resources to draw on, and the opportunity to provide financial support.

Grumpy Old Man

My Facebook profile claims that I blog at www. prairiepondering.com. My personal email signature
includes a link to the Prairie Pondering URL. Yet if you visit this site, you will see that since August, 2016, I have only "pondered" four times. Not much of a blogger.

A few years ago, I posted regularly. I stopped doing so when writing made me increasingly angry and frustrated about the state of the country and the world. I was less frustrated if I avoided the focus that writing requires. I chose to seethe in private rather than rant in Prairie Pondering.

I think the time has come to stop being so unengaged. Repeating Big Lies to numb meaningful debate only succeeds if the falsehoods go unchallenged. I am still angry; I am still frustrated. But that is the new norm among American liberals as the decade ends.

The House of Representatives passed two Articles of Impeachment yesterday. I watched/listened to the debates as background noise at the office, dismayed that the Republicans were allowed to defend Trump by unabashedly droning on with half truths and outright falsehoods without consequence. However, the willingness of recently elected House Democrats from pro-Trump districts to vote their conscience regardless of the political consequences spurred me to return to Prairie Pondering. My public display of conscience is considerably less consequential but every little bit helps.

Watching the impeachment proceedings, I wished that I had the power to interject my responses to various claims as they were being made, putting them on the screen as thought balloons. Here's a few samples:

GOP:
Do nothing Democrats should quit wasting time on impeachment and do their jobs.
SLS:
The House of Representatives has passed 400 bills, 279 on a bi-partisan basis, that Mitch McConnell will not allow to be voted on in the Senate.

GOP:
House Democrats conducted an inquisition in secret in locked rooms in the basement of the Capitol without affording the president the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
SLS: 
Closed door examinations were conducted in front of both Democratic and Republican Representatives and transcripts of testimony were released. None of the Republicans present claimed that the testimony of the witnesses was misreported. Targets of an investigation are not typically allowed to confront accusers before charges are brought. The presence of Republican House members in the investigations with an ability to ask questions of witnesses prevented the target from being railroaded.

GOP:
Democrats have wasted millions of dollars with bogus investigations of the president.
SLS: 
Robert Mueller's prosecution of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort resulted in recoveries in excess of the cost of his investigation. 

GOP:
Trump released the funds being withheld from Ukraine voluntarily, without receiving any commitment to investigate Joe Biden.
SLS: 
The funds were withheld until the public disclosure of the existence of the Whistleblower complaint suggesting improper conduct by the president forced the president to abandon his extortion scheme.

GOP:
The transcript of the president's July 25th phone call with the Ukrainian president was "perfect".
SLS:
It depends on what your definition of "though" is and witnesses who were on the call testified that there were material omissions from the "transcript", excised to support the president's narrative.

GOP:
Democrats are proceeding with impeachment in reliance on anonymous whistleblowers and hearsay. There is no direct evidence of wrong-doing by the president.
SLS:
"Chutzpah" is defined as (a) killing both parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you are an orphan, and (b) instructing witnesses with direct knowledge of the events giving rise to impeachment charges not to testify and refusing to turn over relevant documents subpoenaed by Congress, and then ranting and raving that Democrats are proceeding with impeachment in reliance on anonymous whistleblowers and hearsay and that there is no direct evidence of wrong-doing by the president.

Thanks for indulging me. I'll return to Prairie Pondering from time to time. Some of you may not like what I have to say. We have much in common because I don't like to have to say it. 

The Wait: Love, Fear, and Happiness on the Heart Transplant List (a review)

The Wait: Love, Fear, and Happiness on the Heart Transplant List by Jennifer Bonner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I never watched the movie Love Story, the romantic tragedy based on the Erich Segal novel. It was released on December 16, 1970, two days after my mother succumbed to breast cancer and I saw no need to pursue entertainment, or enlightenment, from reminders of my own experience with life’s unfairness. This aversion, packed away with my avoidance of slasher movies and Mexican restaurants, has served me well for nearly 50 years.

Therefore, it was with some trepidation that I picked up The Wait (Love, Fear and Happiness on the Heart Transplant List), Jennifer Bonner’s and Susan Cushman’s brilliant narrative of the life and times of Jen as a young adult, thriving in her own way with a congenital heart defect. The Wait draws extensively from Jen’s daily diary, revealing the psyche of a vivacious (in its intended sense), witty, self-aware, compassionate, artistic and realistic college co-ed. My years at Carleton College, the setting for much of the book, and my deep and abiding respect for Jen’s parents, mandated investing in Jen’s story.

I will take the dividends to my grave.

Cushman, a retired physician, offers us remarkably understandable descriptions of the medical challenges faced by Jen and her family. We are guided through some of the breakthroughs in heart surgery and transplantation that make today’s procedures so commonplace and, as in 1988, make the shortage of donors a major impediment faced by the practice. Cushman also provides sufficient, but not overbearing, narrative to help us put Jen’s diary in context, allowing us to focus on the wisdom offered by a remarkable young woman.

Jen Bonner does not deny the seriousness of her health challenges. But neither does she allow herself to be subsumed by them. Her diary reflects what I am told are normal yearnings of maturing young women, with a twist: Someday I’m going to graduate. Someday I’ll get a job. Someday, I’ll get married. Someday, I’ll get a heart transplant.

An accomplished artist, Jen joyfully celebrates the accolades received for her work, yet gratefully accepts criticism from a visiting professor, knowing it will allow her to hone her skills as she dreams of someday supporting herself with her art. Jen’s musings about her love interests, expressions of sexual desire, jealousies and fantasies permeate the diary, underscoring the normalcy she pursues during The Wait and reminding the author and the reader that Jen focused on long-term goals that loomed beyond pre-transplant physical limitations.

Finally, Jen, at 20, understands far better than most of us, despite our additional years of experience, the importance of celebrating the big and the little beauties life has to offer. Her cognizance jumps from the pages of her diary and, whether discussing her art (If I can paint something that will shift someone’s balance toward beauty, I will have contributed to their overall happiness and to what I consider to be the base intent, purpose, and necessity of life.), or what should be important to us all (I am blessed with the beauty in my life. Loving parents, many friends, good food, my own studio–I have my own studio! Life is beautiful. I will enjoy however much I get and whatever form it comes in.), Jen Bonner, with Susan Cushman, makes us rethink our priorities as we move through life in the midst of our own Wait.

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