Angels in America

Whenever the subject of the death penalty came up, my father would thunder:  

"There is no such thing as equal justice!"   

Then he'd start ranting about how that SOB Roy Cohn railroaded poor Ethel Rosenberg into the electric chair:

"Your Great Aunt Jo, the devout Catholic who sent money to the Jesuit missionaries in China, was friends with Ethel Rosenberg, the alleged Rusky spy.  Ethel used to hang out in Aunt Jo's office while Ethel waited for her little boys to get out of school.   Then she'd take them for religious instruction.  About all she was guilty of was having a husband who may have been a Rusky spy.   The United of America burned a woman with two little boys in the electric chair ... all because Roy Cohn wanted to be a big shot.   That's why I'm against the death penalty!   There is no such thing as equal justice!" 

The first time I was in the Supreme Court I puked all over their really expensive looking rug.   When a guard took me to the court's little infirmary,  Justice Frankfurter popped in.  The guard tried to introduce me to the great man, but instead of shaking hands,  I hid behind the guard,  frightened by a big man wearing a black dress.

Once you are aware that it is possible and the ingredients,   building an atomic bomb is relatively simple.   The hard part is getting enough uranium or plutonium to make a bomb, and keeping the stuff from killing you once you lay your hands on it, as my college physics professor claimed.   The Rosenbergs didn't give the Russians much help with bomb building... if any at all.

Don't Tip the Waitress

In the early days, dinner with my wife was always a treat ... until it was time to pay the bill.  

Predictably my wife audited the check and remonstrated about the size of the tip.

"When I drove a taxi,  I loved getting a nice tip."

"Nobody tips the nurses!"

(Please dear God!   Help me!  I've stepped into it again.)

When I was a candy stripper they put a bunch of demented old veterans in the nursing home!

If you got too close they grabbed you.   

When they couldn't grab you, they'd throw the bedpans at you!

All hell broke loose when they ran out of cigarettes!

Oh, dear.

Try being the only provider in the Bridgeport ghetto clinic 

and having to delouse young teens where the sun doesn't shine.

Ok, dear.   I get it (but now I'm gonna play my last card) ... at least they don't shoot at nurses.

Then I remembered a young nurse who sat down with us for breakfast one morning.   

I'm just back from Vietnam, she said.

Bet you're glad to be stationed at San Diego.

Yes!   I'm headed for the officer's club at Miramar tonight.

That should be fun ...

In ways people can't appreciate unless you've been in the junior officer's club at Subic Bay

with everyone held in reserve for the great battle about to explode, 

the Filipino country starts playing Streets of El Paso and 

young men turn into horses and riders prancing around the floor in front of the band ...

I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle,
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest.
From out of nowhere, Felina has found me,
Kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side.
Cradled by two loving arms that I'll die for,
One little kiss and Felina good-bye.

On our battlefield, there'd be no Felina's to comfort the dying

hell sometimes there wouldn't even be a body to comfort.

And the private school, country club kids think life is tough.

Grabbing Janet Napolitano

We have many fond memories of Arizona Opera,  especially the think-outside-the-box Mariachi Opera, Janet Napolitano and our front row seat on her political rise.  

Janet was a US Attorney when we met.   She was the perennial opera date of the chairman of my wife's company.   Back then nobody knew Janet so the four of us were never interrupted when we chatted between acts.  Mostly my wife and Monseigneur talked about health care.   Janet wasn't curious and we never got around to talking about what my schoolmate Clarence Thomas was like.  Not that that would have been a long conversation -- he never said anything.   I guess I could have explained how  Thomas and another schoolmate, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Phantom of Wheeler 5, are connected and the counterfactuals of their intersection.   Never got around to it.   

After the opera, we'd walk Janet and Monseigneur back to the diocese parking lot on the other side of Van Buren Street, Phoenix.   Van Buren was known for its ladies ladies of the evening,  but near the church it was just dark and lonely.   One night,  Janet was walking at the head of the column beside me.   Without looking both ways, and before I could grab her,  Janet stepped into the street.  A bicyclist rocketed from out of the dark and narrowly missed running down the future head of Homeland Security.   I was very disappointed in my performance --  some bodyguard.   The biker looked over his shoulder and yelled .... sorrrrry ... as he disappeared back into the dark.

As the years passed and Janet rose through the ranks to governor,  our opportunities to chat became less frequent.   They ended when Janet got a car, driver and a detail of burly DPS bodyguards ... who wears a bulletproof vest to an opera.  We didn't get near Janet again until one day waiting at an airport gate in Boston I looked up and there's Janet sitting right in front of us in the seats perpendicular to ours.   Janet didn't remember us or was just too busy to kiss the baby.  If she'd been Bruce Babbitt,  she wouldn't have missed the opportunity to chat up a constituent  ...  like Bruce did one day when I found myself sitting next to him and McCain.  I was a baby back then ...  thank God he didn't kiss me.

Sleeping in Joseph Smith's great-great-granddaughter's bed

I've slept in bunkhouse with the other cowboys and on a shelf next to an Alaska seiner's 646 diesel engine.   Somewhere in Southeast Asia I slept through Easter.   I sleep next to an artillery gun that shot 70 pound high explosive bullets.  You know you're tired when you can sleep through a battle when they're firing that big old sucker.  

For the longest time I slept in the Joseph Smith's great-great-granddaughter's bed.   That's right the Prophet Joseph Smith.   It was back in Independence, Missouri, where the various Mormon factions were squabbling over who owned the patch of land where Jesus Christ was coming back.   There may have been a lot more greats involved ... she was a gorgeous young thing.   Now that I'm married to a beautiful and smart women,  I have to say I do not regret that it wasn't a package deal.   In fact, when Ms. Smith and her husband split,  all I got was a mattress, which was perfectly functional as far as I was concerned and a lot more comfortable than the shelf next to the 646 diesel.