injaynesworld a "Thanksgiving Memory..."

It was 1961.  Four generations gathered in the San Francisco home of my cousin Barbara, her husband, and two young daughters to celebrate the holiday:  Aunts and great-aunts; grandmothers and great-grandmothers; first, second and third cousins, they were my family.  I was an only child, and happy to be part of such a big, lively tribe for the day.   The dining table extended into the living room and, in the old black-and-white movies taken at the time, my loved ones wave to me as they feasted on traditional holiday fare, forever preserved on celluloid and in my heart.

Gratitude is all attitude, as expressed beautifully in this wonderful short film.  Enjoy...

Wishing you all a Thanksgiving that is bountiful in every way. 

injaynesworld we've "Gone Fishing..."

Actually, I prefer that someone else do the killing, cleaning, and cooking, but I couldn’t resist this latest flash fiction challenge from Business Card Fiction, a new website featuring two monthly prompts, which must be written in the format of the back of a business card.  Best of all, there are prizes involved!  

The official tournament starts on December 1^st, but right now we’re in practice mode, so from the prompt “fish” here is my first attempt at Business Card Fiction.  

That’s all there is to it.  Go check out the website for all the details and come play with us.

Thank you Business Card Fiction judges for choosing my piece as a BCF Favorite and awarding me this nifty badge of merit.  I do love shiny things.  

injaynesworld it's the "Friday Recap..."

I suppose it was selfish of me to hope that with the election over we could all slide into a period of well-earned calm and enjoy the approaching holiday season with only stories of PETA turkey protests and the occasional drunken Santa to mar our peace. 

Alas…

What would the 24-hour news cycle do if powerful white guys ever started keeping their pants zipped?   There’s a whole industry of people who could be thrown out of work without the dependability of a good sex scandal at least once a year.   Hard to believe it’s been over a year since Weiner-gate, isn’t it?  

The players…

The General

The Wife

The Babe

                                                

The Other General

Creepy FBI Dude

The Other Babe

                                                        

And as long as we’re speaking of a woman scored, remember Mother Nature?  The gal who let loose with some major whup-ass on the east coast?   

AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Sadly, Sandy seems to have already taken a back seat to our insatiable appetite for shiny new objects. 

***

Meanwhile, John McCain…

… is vowing to block the appointment of Oxford educated-Rhodes Scholar U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for the job of Secretary of State, accusing the ambassador of lying about the Benghazi attack…

On Wednesday, McCain skipped out on an intelligence briefing on the details of the Benghazi investigation to instead hold a press conference – to blast the administration about the lack of intelligence briefings on the details of the Benghazi investigation.  

Get the net.

***

Mitt Romney finally figured out why he lost the election…

Eager to share his insights with donors on a conference call – and apparently still unaware of the invention of recording devices – Romney whined that it wasn’t his fault.  President Obama gave “gifts” to all his voting constituencies and that’s the only reason he won.
 

Yes.  If only his billionaire donors had possessed the foresight to send us all new cars, Romney could have sewn this thing up.

To their credit, every Republican politician who hopes to run for any office ever again stated emphatically that Romney’s comments only served to dig the party further into the shit-hole of irrelevance and suggesting…

***

Toodaloo Twinkies…

Hostess announced that after years of losing market share in the junk food industry the company is closing its doors, but not before blaming those big, bad unions for its financial woes.  It would seem, however, that there is plenty of blame to go around.

The company, which first filed bankruptcy in 2004, has been controlled by a group of Wall Street “restructuring” investment firms for the past eight years that, while squeezing concessions from workers, rewarded its CEOs, who had no bakery or food industry experience whatsoever, with fat compensation. 

Twinkies could be back though if another company buys the brand during the sell-off of the company’s assets. 

Personally, I will miss the Hostess Lemon fruit pie.  Yum.   

What’s your guilty Hostess pleasure?

***

 And finally, “Dump the Donald…?

Macy’s is standing by Donald Trump despite an online petition that has amassed over 600,000 signatures asking the company to dump Donald’s line of men’s clothing due to his "especially unpleasant, nasty and despicable behavior" such as "personally attacking women" he disagrees with, denying climate change, continuing the "birther" conspiracy against President Obama.

I disagree.  We have freedom of expression in this country that protects even douchebags.  If you don’t want his product line to succeed, don’t buy it. 

On the other hand, I completely agree with Chelsea Handler’s take on the issue…

 

Well, that was fun.   

 

injaynesworld "Tell Me A Story..."

The line extended as far as the eye could see, each of us hoping that today we would be among the lucky ones chosen to be part of some writer’s story.  

I’ve led many lives; a pregnant teenager, the father of a murdered son – that was a tough one – a prison inmate, even a horse near death from neglect, so I’m hoping for a bit of romance this next time.  

You’d think with so many writers in the world that there would be a shortage of characters, but the truth is we are in infinite supply, our variation limited only by the dreams and discipline of those who would seek us out. 

They do so like to believe they’ve created us.  Little do they know we’ve been here all the time – just waiting. 


From the FiveSentence Fiction prompt “character.”

injaynesworld "'We the People' Means Everyone..."

As a child, I recall a woman coming to our door one evening collecting for the poor. I pushed my way in front of my mother who stood in the open doorway. Even at seven years old, the thought of someone not having enough to meet their basic needs was crushing to me. I ran to my room, got my piggy bank and would have handed over my entire savings of $3.00 had my mother not stopped me. I don’t remember what Mom gave her, but the image of that woman standing there is still very vivid in my mind. That may have been the day I became a “bleeding-heart liberal.”

We were not well off by any means, but we had more than some. There was a family in our neighborhood who we gave my school dresses to once I’d outgrown them. They were really the only “poor” family I knew, but at least they had a house to live in.

Eisenhower was in the White House, the highest tax rate was 90%, and the country had never been more prosperous. Those folks in the 90% bracket were mostly the stuff of movies to the rest of us, but sometimes my family would pile into our old Hudson and cruise the rich neighborhood to gaze at all the mansions. Nobody begrudged them their wealth. It gave us something to strive for.

Today the term “wealth inequality” is one we hear a lot. The highest tax rate is supposed to be 35%, but if you’ve made your millions from investing, you only pay 15%, and if you’re Mitt Romney with an investment income of $57,000 a day that figure inexplicably drops to a paltry 13.9.

But who can really fault him? He’s not breaking any law. Okay, those foreign bank accounts of his aren't exactly kosher, and having the tax laws written by the same Wall Street interests from which Mitt and folks like him derive all that dough might be the teensiest bit skewed, but as Romney would explain it -- the rest of us are just lazy, envious, free-loaders.

Ours has historically been a class-based society with extremes on both ends of the money spectrum and a vast middle where the majority of Americans comfortably resided. It was a society where your birth status took a back seat to your dreams, and those “poor kids” who wore my hand-me-down dresses needed only a willingness to work for those dreams to achieve them. I miss that America.

Today, most of those mansion-filled neighborhoods that I drove through as a child have gates around them, and gone from our collective consciousness seems to be the notion that when we all have an equal opportunity to succeed our country also succeeds.

A strong and prosperous society depends on a balance between collective rights and individual rights. Today’s GOP would have individual rights, primarily those of the richest 1% among us, trump all else – except when it comes to a woman’s right to make decisions governing her own body, of course.

Despite what Romney believes about us, I know that given an even playing field Americans are the hardest-working folks on the planet. As for me, I’m still that seven-year-old who wants everyone to have enough. The difference today is, I now also know that there really is enough for everyone.

injaynesworld we make "Final Arrangements..."

She was supposed to have been in Sacramento by two o’clock to go over the final arrangements for the annual partners’ dinner that night, but it must be long past two by now.

Emily liked things to go according to plan – insisted on it – to the frequent annoyance of colleagues who often suggested she try to be more flexible, but “flexible” was just another word for indecision to Emily who prided herself on her decisiveness.

She watched as the large crane pulled her submerged sedan from the lake’s chilly, black water, and knew that lovely new cocktail dress she had so meticulously packed was probably ruined.   The car was slowly lowered down onto the bank where it was quickly surrounded by rescue personnel who now carefully pulled Emily’s lifeless body from the vehicle.

As Emily felt herself floating farther and farther away from the scene, she wondered if perhaps, just this once, she should have been a little more flexible. 

This post is in response to the Five Sentence Fiction prompt “Detour.”  

injaynesworld we're "Tired of the Herd Mentality..."

We're a nation of idiots.

How can any voter be undecided at this point?   Do they live in caves?  

And what’s with these daily polls swinging this way and that?   I feel like I’ve been living in a martini shaker.  Who are these people who keep changing their minds according to what the media tells them on any particular day?  

Okay, that 47% remark by Romney was a big deal.  I understood when he tanked after calling half of America a bunch of freeloaders.  But then he showed up at that first debate, lied about every single thing he’d ever said in the past and bump!  He’s up again.  Granted, Obama didn’t bother to even show up, but still…  Are people’s memories really that short?

I guess I’m no one to cast aspersions on anyone else's memory.  God knows, it’s all I can do to remember where I live on some days, but I do remember my core values.  

Last night as I watched Biden schooling the young Ryan in history, I did so knowing my mind was already made up.   The following two hours where pundits argued about who did or did not “win” weren’t going to make a damn bit of difference to me.   Yet today, everyone’s eyes are once again on those almighty polls like a bunch of sheep waiting to be told which way to go.

We’re a nation that swings wildly from left to right and back again in a time frame as little as a decade.  Is it no wonder we can’t establish any lasting policies that the world can depend upon?   Seriously, who the hell knows what we’re going to do next?

We demand instant gratification.   Problems decades in the making are expected to be solved in as little as four years.   If not, we switch course yet again.   Then we stand around and complain about how nothing ever gets done.

Make a damn decision and stick to it, people!   I’m exhausted!