Thursday, September 19, 2013

News – The most interesting thing in the news today was the scheduled testimony of Caroline Kennedy in front of the Senate as the nominee for Ambassador to Japan. She has worked in party politics, supporting Obama over Clinton, though she also contributed funds to Hillary Clinton in the same race. She is a lawyer, writer and editor, and has served on many boards for charities. She worked two years for the Office Of Strategic Partnerships for the NYC Department of Education. She is a liberal, favoring same sex marriage, the pro-choice position on abortion, gun control and the death penalty. She advocates the security of Israel with Jerusalem being the undivided capitol of Israel, and Israel as being responsible for their own security decisions. She hopes for a two-state peace agreement with Palestine, if Palestine is “a true partner for peace.” The Wikipedia article and other websites did not comment on her expertise on Japan. If she is confirmed she would be the first female ambassador to Japan. The website nippon.com stated that the consensus in Japan is one of approval. I will be happy if she is approved, because she is the last of the well-known Kennedys and though she is in the midst of a separation from her husband with a rumor of an affair on the side, she seems to me to be a promising candidate. I think she is intellectually capable of performing well.

The weather yesterday was, as predicted, rainy with 4” falling in Jacksonville. Naturally there was flooding in several parts of the city. Our drainage system doesn't work perfectly. San Marco has a number of streets that almost always flood when it rains much. There are always the warnings for drivers to turn around and go back rather than trying to drive through flood waters, but there are always cars that get stranded because they didn't follow the advice. I hope I will have the common sense not to drive through flood water if I'm ever out in a heavy rain storm. I have been in storms with rain so heavy that I couldn't see, even though the windshield wipers were going at full tilt. Sometimes I put my flashers on and slowly proceed, but more often I have pulled over to the side and parked until the rain got lighter. A thunderstorm in Jacksonville doesn't usually last more than 15 or 20 minutes, luckily.

There is a really cute commercial that just played for Captain D's, a restaurant that I never patronize because they have mediocre food in small quantities. Their commercial, though, has a young black girl and her father sitting in Captain D's. The father asks her “If you have 6 shrimp and someone takes 3, how many do you have left?” She gives a couple of seconds thought to it and says “Six, because nobody is going to take my shrimp.” Her father is taken aback, and says she is a smart girl. Then after a brief announcement of what Capt. D's offers, they switch back to the father again, who is reaching out his hand to take some of her shrimp. Without a moments pause, she says with a determined smile, “We just talked about that!” The father gives a very funny expression of dismay and says “You sound just like your mother!”

I'm going to start reading a true life crime story by Ann Rule, who has written a number of those. This one is called Too Late To Say Goodbye. A woman who is supposedly happily married is found dead with a gun beside her. The husband, it turns out, had another relationship in the past in which a similarly suspicious suicide occurred. The story takes place in Buford, Georgia in 2004, with the previous death occurring in 1990. Reading now.

Page 23, this sentence strikes me for its literary style, almost like poetry. “The shriek of sirens piercing the chill December morning on Bogan Gates Drive was almost as alien as the thackety-thackety of helicopters overhead would be.” That really is a very good opening sentence. The author comments on the fact that Oprah Winfrey once broadcast her show from Buford to turn a light on the hard-set racial problems there. The neighborhood is well-to-do, the husband a dentist. Rule is going into considerable detail about all the people involved in the story, and I am enjoying it. It reads smoothly and I'm moving right through it at a good pace. I'll have to get another one of hers. I saw one the last time I was at the library.

It's 5:25. Time for the news and supper.