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February 7, 1998
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Why aren't there thousands of people in the streets? Well, there are but they're shopping, not protesting the possible attack on Iraq. I got a little intense talking about the 90's as the decade without compassion and the indifference toward the horror of dropping bombs ... As I was having coffee with Tom & Julie this morning the conversation moved from books and poetry and the press's obsession with Clinton's penis to war and peace. The guy with the laptop, who teaches at the voc-tech, joined us and got so into blaming the depersonalization and lack of community and compassion in the 90's on the Reagan administration - you can rename it Reagan Airport if you want but it's still terrifying to land there - that poor laptop man forgot to order his coffee and had to rush home to record his favorite opera on the radio without having had his coffee. And the place I sent him to to get his laptop fixed doesn't service Macs anymore -- eek, I'm glad he told me but I'm pissed that they're still on Apple's list. Anyway my voice rose an octave when I started getting really upset about Iraq. I like Julie's theory that this is all Wag the Dog in reverse - the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal is all invented to distract us from the upcoming attack on Iraq. Isn't anybody besides Boris Yeltsin afraid this could start world war three? In that hyped up mood I went off to pick up Nancy at the bus station for a visit to Trident Booksellers and Cafe to celebrate our anniversary. We met at Trident on a Saturday afternoon in February four years ago. It was a warm day between a couple of big snow storms. The snow was melting all around and running in rivulets in the street. Today was also unseasonably warm but the snow wasn't melting as fast because it's all covered with a thick insulating layer of grime. Today we had to wait for a table and the place was packed the whole time we were there with people waiting to grab a table as soon as you looked like you might be finished. Four years ago, we sat there for 8 hours undisturbed - the cafe was practically empty. They have a liquor license now so they serve beer and wine, which they didn't back then - not that that matters to us. They serve chai now. All trendy places serve chai. It's pretty good too. We talked about books and poetry and music and the evils of managed care and of course Clinton's penis and the feeling of impending doom hanging over the planet... My theory on managed care is that the insurance companies want all the mentally ill people to kill themselves to save money and eliminate mental health care altogether. If the mentally ill are all dead, why would you need mental health agencies and practitioners? If people are not rising up and taking to the streets over dropping bombs, I'm sure that the National Association of Social Workers is not going to take to the streets over managed care. Gee, am I in a bad mood or what? |
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