"We, of course, don't pay ransom for any hostages," Mr. Bush said.
"What we will do, of course, is use our intelligence-gathering to see if we can't help locate them," Mr. Bush said.
I went to that way of th master site and found I'm directly guilty of breaking nine out of ten commandments. I guess I'm going to hell anyway.
You know that excited feeling you get when someone opens a special present you made for them? I like to call that "Jesus Joy!"
When I was little girl growing up in Poland, I was always called CHLOPIECY**, like a boy. I have only brothers, so I like to play sports and climb trees, not playing with dolls or to braiding the hair. I have little girlfriends, of course, girls I carry books for and moon over, but I never think that I love only girls. But no one tell me that there are sometimes girls who like other girls, so when I am old enough, and a boy ask me to marry him, I accept.
He was a good boy, very smart and ambitious, and he wanted to come to America. So we get married, and we come to the United States. He work very hard in very hard jobs, and his bosses start to see how smart he is, so he work his way up the ladder, so as they say. He worked in the tool factory, yes, in New Britain? So he gets new job as boss, and we buy a small house, near to the factory so he can walk to work and come home for lunch, and then we have a baby boy, my Stanislaus. Only no one ever tell me about the play and the movie about the car named desire, no? So my baby is called Stanley Kowalski. Sometimes people would laugh when they hear his name and I don't know why, but now I know. He is nothing like the Stanley in the movie, though. My Stanley is a lamb, so gentle and sweet. He is a nurse in the Emergency Room at the hospital, now."
"So we live in the nice little house with our sweet little boy, and we have a nice marriage. I love my husband like a friend, and we are happy. We go to church and we have friends over and play cards and have some drinks, always a lot of fun. But one winter day, he was walking home from work, and a car slip on the ice and hit him, and he seem okay at first, but too much bleeding inside, and he died."
"I'm so sorry," Tina interjected. Rose smiled.
"I still miss him sometimes because he always knew how to make the right decision about everything. But if he was still alive, I would not have found the person I love more than life," and she squeezed Laura's hand, "so maybe God was just making things happen the way He does, in the mysterious way. Karol was a good man, and he take care of his family, so we have insurance money, and I pay off the little house and stay home with Stanley until he goes to school. But I don't like housekeeping, and I'm a strong woman, so I decide to go to work while Stanley is in school. This was in 1974, so there are now many woman working, many divorced woman, so it was not so hard to find a job. I go to work in a nursery, because I always like plants and I have a green thumb. And I work there all day, and come home at 3 for Stanley, and we have a very good life."
"But a lonely one, too," she continued. "As Stanley gets older, and doesn't need his mama so much, I take classes to get my English better, and I meet many men at church and at my class who want to take me out on a date, but I was not interested. I never ask myself why I was not interested, until I am reading about woman's liberation and read about lesbians, and I know that I am one of them, but I don't know what to do. I sometimes ask Karol, after I say my prayers and get into bed, Karol, what am I to do? But of course he cannot give me answer, so I try to imagine what he would do. And Karol was very honest man, and I think he would tell me that I have to always be honest, and not be ashamed of how God made me."
"So I look at my face in the mirror, and I say to myself I am lesbian, and that I want to love other woman, but I am not one to go to a bar for that purpose, for meeting woman. So I pray God will send someone to me."
"And then Laura came to work at the nursery, too. She was very quiet, but I like how she smiles, and I can make her laugh, like giggling, and I know she like me but I don't know how she like me, you know? So I know I have to be having courage, and I ask quiet Laura if she would like to come over for dinner, and she smile very shy and say yes. So I ask Stanley if he like to play over at his friend's house one night, and I make nice Polish dinner for Laura, and she come over and I maybe give her a few drinks to help her relax,"
"She was naughty, wasn't she, trying to take advantage of me like that?" Laura said, giggling.
"So we are having nice time together and laughing, but I am also getting nervous, because I'm not sure how to find out if she is also a lesbian. So as she is leaving, I walk her to the door, and I decide now I have to act like a man, like I am only taking what I deserve, and worry later if she likes to be with me, too. So she turns to say goodnight, and she is holding out her hand, like to shake, and I take her hand and pull her to me and I give her a kiss, first time I ever kiss a girl, and I know it is right thing for me, and I can tell Laura is liking me, too."
Tina smiled, "that is the sweetest story!" she said.
James had listened intently, and he nodded his head in agreement.
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Very High |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Moderate |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Moderate |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Very Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Low |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | High |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Moderate |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | Moderate |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Very Low |
"So what's shakin', bacon?" Tina asked. It was a phrase Peter had used sometimes, in his goofy yet charming way.
James looked at her again, and she was shocked as tears welled up in his eyes.
He covered his face with his hands and put his head down, and Tina wasn't sure what to do.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" she asked. "Oh, honey, did I say something wrong?" She opened the glove box and pulled out a few tissues.
"Oh, Tina, I'm sorry," he said, "I was thinking about Peter today, and that's partly why I'm so out of it. I miss him so much."
Tina felt herself getting choked up.
"I know," she said, sitting back in her seat, handing James a tissue and taking one for herself - she started to wipe away her tears and then she remembered that she was wearing makeup, so she dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
"I guess," James said, "I guess that as we get closer to the wedding, I'm just missing him more and more. He should be here." His voice shook and he said "he should be my best man."
"I miss him, too" Tina said. "But I kind of feel like he's always with me, and at least part of that is because you're with me." She took his hand and he turned towards her. "Sometimes I feel like he brought us together."
She thought back to the funeral. She tried to stay at the wake, but she kept losing it. Her brother, her buddy, her protector, her role model, gone. Gone forever, in the blink of an eye. Because of the accident, there was a closed casket, and she kept looking over at the coffin, disbelieving that the smooth wooden box could possibly contain Peter. He was uncontainable, she thought, too big for that small box. She couldn't speak to anyone, she couldn't look at anyone, she felt like she couldn't breathe. The room was filled with relatives, all talking in hushed tones, a contrast to the funerals of her grandmothers, who lived to be very old women - there, the wake was truly a celebration of the lives of the deceased. It was different, Tina thought, when the person wasn't supposed to die for a long time yet.
She stepped out of the room, and felt herself starting to sob loudly again as she walked outside to get a breath of air.
It was a beautiful evening, which made Tina angry. The world should stop spinning, she thought. It should be hailing or raining or snowing, there should be hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes, because everyone should have to suffer. No one should be enjoying a nice walk after dinner today, she thought. Peter was dead. She looked over the parking lot. It was a large lot, absolutely filled with cars, with more cars lining the street, a testament to how loved Peter was. In the lot, the rows were divided by guardrails, so cars would drive into a space and have a guardrail facing them, and the row of cars opposite would have the same, so the guardrails were back to back, and the funeral home owners, in an effort, Tina supposed, to distract the clientele from the ugly metal of the guardrails, had planted flowers in the space where each guardrail backed in the other. It makes sense, she thought. That's what they do to the bodies in this place. They take the body, and try to mak e it look alive, to distract people from the fact that their loved one is dead.
She began sobbing again, and she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she didn't even bother to look at who it was, she just threw herself into the chest that belonged to the arm, and sobbed. How could she still have tears, she thought. She felt the arms tighten around here, and then she felt that the person holding her was sobbing, too, and they stood there together, holding each other up, sobbing because Peter was dead.
When she stopped sobbing (for the moment), she suddenly felt embarassed by her display.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she looked up into James' face. Tina knew James well, of course, Peter had brought him over for dinner a hundred times, and when she went to visit him at his apartment, James was usually there. They had played a few hands of poker over verboten alcoholic beverages long before she turned 21.
She didn't think for a moment what she must look like - days of alternating between sobbing and catatonic disbelief had left her looking more than a little disheveled and unkempt. And she didn't really notice that James looked just as bad, his eyes were swollen and red from crying.
"Jim," she started to say, and he leaned down and kissed her, and then she put her arms around him and he draped his head over his shoulder and they just held onto each other, trying to will Peter back to existance.
"I was kind of hoping he'd come back just to tell me to keep my hands off his sister," James choked out. His voice was distorted and strange, and Tina knew that it was his grief - it was coming out however hard he tried to hold it back. She knew because she was sounding the same today. "I'm sorry if I was forward."
Tina looked up at James and kissed him back. This was so strange, she thought. She never thought of James as anything other than Peter's best friend - he had always seemed asexual, really. But now she felt like she wanted to be with him, to have him hold her and kiss her and make her feel something other than what she was feeling, because she was in hell.
James Conroy, Esquire, was distracted and scared, two sensaTions that had become constant companions in the past few weeks. He still appeared to be the same to his paralegal, to his fiancée, to the other attorneys at the firm, to his clients. But inside, there was a constant, low level of terror swimming underneath every thought. He felt like he was acting a role, like he was being filmed and his every acTion was accompanied by a Hitchcock inspired soundtrack that only he could hear. It was a fear he could sublimate, amygdalize…he would put it to the back of his mind while he went about his day, and he could eat lunch and meet with clients and laugh and joke, but then he would get a call from home or he would look at the picture on his desk, and the fear would come to the surface, unbidden and unwanted, and he would remember why he was so scared.
The wedding. He was getting married in less than a month.
When he had proposed to Tina, he was absolutely sincere in his belief that he was ready to share the rest of his life with her. And when he started to feel apprehensive about his approaching nupZials, he iniZially blew it off as simple jitters. When the feelings started to rise, when he started to dread even looking at Tina’s face, let along talking about seating arrangements or gift registries, when he started feeling like a man approaching the gallows, he picked his mother up for lunch to talk to her.
“Mom, I don’t know if I can get married,” he said. “I’m beginning to think I’ve made a huge mistake.”
His mother tapped him on the arm, in mock outrage. “Bite your tongue, Jamie,” she said. “Tina is a lovely girl and you are so good together.”
“I know,” James said, “and it’s not that I don’t love her, because I do, but,” he paused, considering what he would say next. “Maybe I’m just not the marrying type.”
“Most men aren’t, honey, at least not before they get hitched,” she replied. “It’s scary. Men are told their whole lives to go out and conquer, and you get so many mixed messages about,” she lowered her voice and spelled out, “S-E-X.” She continued in her regular voice. “But marriage is a good thing, Jamie. You have someone to be your partner to help you through everything life can throw at it you, and believe me, life will throw things at you.” She sighed and examined her fork. James knew she was thinking of his father.
“But mom, I am not feeling normal scared. I’m feeling like this is the worst thing I’ve ever done scared. And maybe it isn’t fair to Tina to marry her when I feel like this.”
“Jamie, honey, your father, God rest his soul, got more and more scared as the day of our wedding came closer and closer”, she said, stopping to take a bite of her Cobb salad. “It’s cold feet, sweetie, and once you say ‘I do’ and go to the recepTion, you’ll see your beautiful bride, and see the beautiful life you’re going to have together, and realize that you did the right thing.”
“I don’t know, mom,” he said, “I feel like maybe I’m trying to tell myself to put the brakes on.”
“Jamie,” his mother said, looking at him tenderly, “I’m telling you, you are going through something completely normal.”
“Normal,” he thought to himself as he sat in his office. “This is definitely not normal.”
He picked up the picture on his desk. It was from a vacaTion Tina and James had taken last summer, a week spent in Cape Cod at her uncle’s summer cottage. They looked like the ideal couple – they were on the beach, and the warm orange light suggested that it was nearly sunset. Tina was wearing a white maillot style bathing suit, setting off her beautiful tan, and silky dark brown hair, and Jamie was standing behind her, holding her close to his bare chest, pale next to her skin. He looked good, strong and fit. He remembered that last summer, he was running with Tina every morning, and would go to the fitness center at the condo complex three or four times a week to lift weights. He didn’t have washer board abs, and he wasn’t overly bulky, but he looked strong and manly. His light brown hair was windblown, but looked deliberately designed. He was smiling into the camera, but he could see the expression in his eyes, the distance. He wasn’t ent irely there.
He loved this picture, he knew, not because of the happy memories of the vacaTion (although there were happy memories from the vacaTion), and not because he looked good in the picture (although he did, as he noted with a certain amount of pride), or because Tina looked good in the picture (although she looked stunning.) He loved the picture because of what he saw in Tina's face, in her expression, in the way she tilted her head, in the way she held her body. He saw Peter.
Every Democratic candidate for the boards of Directors and Education was elected Tuesday in a victory whose scale surprised members of both parties.
My blog is worth $39,517.80.
How much is your blog worth?
Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at for potential indictment . These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course). Hadley has told friends he expects to be indicted. No wonder folks are nervous at the White House.
Indicted? I knew that. Did you think I didn't know that?
 | You scored as Capt. Mal Reynolds. The Captain. You are the captain of the ship, so the crew are your responsibility. You just want to do the job, get paid and keep flying. Why is that always so hard?
Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
The former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Lord Palumbo, who lunched with Mrs. T six months ago, told me recently what she said when he asked her if, given the intelligence at the time, she would have made the decision to invade Iraq. "I was a scientist before I was a politician, Peter," she told him carefully. "And as a scientist I know you need facts, evidence and proof -- and then you check, recheck and check again. The fact was that there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof. As a politician the most serious decision you can take is to commit your armed services to war from which they may not return."
You Can't Take The Sky From Me
"Civil unions performed in other states are entitled to full faith and credit in Connecticut..." said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
Out-of-state same-sex marriages have no legal force and effect here," Blumenthal wrote in a legal opinion requested by the state's Department of Public Health, which administers marriage licenses.
