Mr. Bear, dear puppy of Heather, this is a happy, peaceful prayer. Although I don’t know you personally, I am your Aunt Dolly, and your brother, Littie, lived with us until he unexpectedly made a journey to Heaven in early 2004. So I feel I know you, and more importantly, I care deeply about how you and your mother are. Please, can you rest, and heal, and be callllmmmm, and drink your water and eat what Heather gives you, and have pleasant little dreams. This is my prayer of love for you. Dolly

Heather is 10 and a half months younger than me. She got the short end of the stick, and she shouldn’t have. She remembers in detail many things that I don’t. I would like to say, though, for the record, that she is an extremely beautiful person. I always have pictured her as being a ballet dancer. If she were a dog, she’d be an Afghan hound. When things got bad at the house when we were children, she curled up with/into books. I escaped outside. One Christmas, we got a bike. I think I can still smell it along with the Christmas tree. It was a 36″ 3- speed, I think, from Sears, and Mom and Dad put it together secretly. Problem was, it was one bike, so Heather and I could never ride bikes together.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto today has created a surreal cloud, which precludes feelings of normalcy, over the world. Although I am confused by events, people, and their implications in Pakistan, what has just happened creates a momentous tone. She surely was a very brave woman.

It occurs to me that the practice of Feng Shui may serve as an artistic justification for O.C.D.!

In the days since my first post, I made an attempt to write on paper one of my takes on life as it is being manifested in this crazy world now. I couldn’t even re-read it! It was a long-winded treatise on Congress’ abrogation of its Constitutional authority by giving Bush carte blanche to declare war in Iraq. Well, I still have a lot to say about this, but what has been uppermost in my spinning mind is how powerless I am, and how overbearing my spewing forth of heretofore undirected thoughts seems to me. So, it’s not so much the content but the organization and presentation that has been stopping me; I have a huge need to speak out and share my views. I’ll try to keep it simple and clear.

This whole beweaveit thing will, with some effort on my part, become my voice. I talk: who listens? I write to the paper, or to my Congressperson: where does my communique go? I vote: do I really count? EXCUSE ME! [thank you, Steve Martin]- I have something to say!!! In retrospect, I was right about Iraq; the concept of a pre-emptive war is foreign to me; being rude is not the Golden Rule; I have a gut feeling that we’re digging our own grave.

September 19, 2001: My loved ones and I could also have been at the W.T.C. I have always wanted to go back to the outdoor restaurant in the W.T.C. complex where in the early 1980’s they had that very fine pasta salad with angel hair, tomatoes, vinaigrette, and don’t remember what else, and I was going to ask my sister if she could take me there again.

September 19, 2001: My deepest, beyond-words sympathy goes to the souls of the victims and to their loved ones. Oh, the horror.

September 19, 2001: On Sunday, Sept. 9 I was traveling from Upstate and crossing a bridge with a view of the Manhattan skyline. As is my habit, I watched the skyline and said to myself “There’s my sister and nephew!” while the last landmark to show on the horizon was the World Trade Center; I still can’t believe that was to be my last view of it.

September 17, 2001: Those who committed the horrible acts of 9-11-01 in the name of God or Allah or religion or ideology of any sort are deluded. They committed these acts in the name of evil, which word I will not capitalize. These people are too unconscious to be religious; being unconscious, they fabricate lies and call them truth.

September 17, 2001: I hope people stop harassing people who they think look like or have names like Muslims or Saudi Arabians or like that. These terrorists are extremists, and the mainstream has nothing to do with them. Remember, for example, that Timothy McVeigh looked like one of us. We’ve got ‘em, too.

September 17, 2001: Those terrorists have no sense of humor. If they could have laughed at Saturday Night Live, they would have been incapable of carrying out their evil schemes.

September 11, 2001: Dear God – please help us all.