This is a stick up

Bernard Madoff was arrested this week for ripping off untold numbers of investors in the amount of 50 billion dollars.

Wait now, let me repeat this: 50 BILLION dollars.

If a twenty year old with a drug habit and a hankerin for heroin holds up a liquor store for 50 bucks his ass lands in jail that VERY NIGHT. There is usually no one to pay his bond and he is not likely to have a well dressed attorney to reduce his bail terms. He gets no special treatment and can go to jail in a heartbeat.

So, if you are a white collared rich dude with an expensive attorney here is what you get for STEALING 50 BILLION dollars:

"Out on bail with a curfew, defendant must be remanded to his home between 7pm and 9 am. Passport is surrendered and defendant must wear anklet device".

Oh, wow, what a statement of the seriousness of the crime huh? What kind of a legal system do we have when someone can rob people, albeit rich people, of so much money and get some little lightweight slap on the hand?

I'm appalled, I'm just completely agog. It almost makes one want to go to law school just to level the playing field.

Okay now, I said almost.

But for real, 50 billion?

Of cigarettes and longing

It's Christmas time, and I want my mom. It's been over 18 years now, and the gut wrenching grief is long gone, but the ties that hold you to your mom never come undone, even in death. I was shopping last week, in a great mood, looking at some Christmas ribbons, when all of a sudden my mother's favorite Christmas song came on the store speakers. I instantly started sobbing in the middle of the aisle, I came completely unglued in the middle of the dollar store.

Christmas was cookie heaven at our house growing up. We didn't have money, but we had a lot of baked goods. We decorated cut out cookies so much my sister Nancy refers to that time as our "cookie sweat shop" period. We loved decorating them but there really can be too much of a good thing! After a few dozen ginger bread cookies made just so, we would just sprinkle on the glittering sparkles as fast as we could to get them done. But everyone loved my Mom's baking, and Christmas was the time when her talents really shined. Like making Hajji, everyone had to come at some point and taste my mother's baked goods.

What kind of solace is there for the deep, primal loss of your mother? What-that she's in heaven? Or that she's reached Nirvana? Or that she's in Purgatory working out her sins? Or that she's dust?

If I can take license for just a moment I would like to picture my mother in Heaven like this: She is wearing her turqoise polyester pant suit, letting her nails dry from just painting them cherry red. Her permed-up hair is sprayed up good and it has the artificial look of Clairol #5 Strawberry Blonde. She's sitting at a table with a cheap cigarette in one hand, and a beer in the other. Sitting next to her is her wild, untamed, chain-smoking, crazy ass sister Rosie who is borrowing a Vicodin and a beer from my mom and dealing out the cards for them to play KIngs in the Corner. They are in hog heaven, praising Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Halleluia and pass the ashtray! Both of them had childhood trauma's and a lifetime of addictions, but my mother had a heart of gold. I miss that heart.

That's it, that's all. Just that, although my heart is full and I am happier in my life than I have ever been, I still miss her. Always will I guess.

Purple Haze

Chicanery- I love the sound of this word, it sounds like a fun pink and black striped candy that you could buy at the candy counter in a movie theater, but the meaning is more like what you find on the floor of the theater after an all-day film fest.

This week we found out that Chicago politics are more corrupt than we even knew. The Governor was auctioning off the vacating senate seat of our president elect for payola, and wanted other perks as well. So many pundits are chiming in on this dung heap, it's hard to find anything else to say, but as I am rarely at a loss for words, I have some thoughts on the matter.

Why is it that so many times in various different settings, people lose themselves when they gain recognition and success? You see it in corporations, in school boards and especially in churches. The humble servant seeks to serve and before long he expects that all should serve him (or her). Are we destined to just have the most base and coniving of our species rise to places of power because the rest of us have no stomach for it? I'd like to think that there are those among us who, given the challenge, could overcome the temptation to morph into the egocentric goons that seem to occupy the highest seats.

I saw Ann Coulter on Fox News today. Her whole aura seems to be one of gloating, self righteousness. Her comments are snide and her world view is so negative, it's hard to imagine her being in any relationships with friends who would feel safe around her. I confess I would love to lock her in a room with Bill Mahr, the room would combust with their two egos in full throttle.

In the end I believe that Jimi Hendrix was right: "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

I'm hoping with all my heart that Mr. Obama will raise the bar for our government, and our country as a whole. I want to aspire to be a better person for the higher good. I want to live in a country where we aren't all jaded about our leaders, where we feel that they are making decisions that will benefit the many, not just the few.

Am I naive? Perhaps, but I love the idea that we can all evolve, that life is an ever changing ball of wonder, and that the impossible can come still come true.