Gallimaufry 6

It's been a while since I've had a Gallimaufry round-up - since June, In fact.  So, it's about time to gather up some bits and pieces of events that have been floating about.

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When HWMBO decided to visit me in Switzerland, we had some tentative travel plans during his visit.  Interestingly, our social life has been so eventful, first with planning and implementing events related to the retirement of my former boss and good friend, and otherwise with getting together with old friends and new that we haven't yet had time to squeeze them in.  He seems to be enjoying himself and we've both enjoyed seeing so many good people that we both knew together, as well as my newest neighbors here, most of whom he had never met in person until this visit.  At least my newest neighbors now seem to realize that I do have a husband - he is not simply a figment of my imagination!

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HWMBO is an avid tennis player and fan.  So today, we enjoyed watching Swiss TV coverage of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic playing in the final of the Swiss Indoor Tournament in Basel - Federer's home town.  I say "we" advisedly.  I have the idea that my tension infects Roger's play.  So, to do Roger a favor today after he dropped the second set to Novak, I moved into the other room out of sight of the TV.  It must have done the trick (ha!).  Roger came through 2-1 to win his fifth title of 2010, his fourth career title for this particular tournament.   I also like Djokovic's game, however, and Novak played well today even though he had to settle for second place.

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On the home front, Prince Attani's real name has not yet been made public so we're still waiting to hear the final choice.  It took a while for Big T and Sweet Momma H to settle on Prince Tyger's name but they came through trumps.  So I'm sure that they'll do so again.  I remember that it took a couple of days for us to name Big T, even though the name we chose was our clear front-runner for a boy.  We had "Meryam" in reserve for a girl.  I was so sure that No 2 son, Big S, would be a little girl that I refused even to consider a male name.  The minute I saw him, however, I realized that our choice of "Sarah" would not work at all!  So it meant that his father and I had seriously to discuss names for boys right beside his little clinic cot.  When Big S's father mentioned the name that we ultimately chose, that was it.  It was obviously "cut" for him.  Although he goes by a nickname, no one who knows him can imagine him as anything but that.

Interestingly, even though those in this generation have the luxury of knowing the gender ahead of time, they seem to have a more difficult time choosing names than we did.  Of the grandchildren, only Princess Butterfly had a real first name before she was born.  Even then, her parents had difficulty concurring on a second name and I inadvertently disseminated the wrong one to other family members because minds changed even after that!  I learned my lesson.  When Prince Attani, whose real name will not feature here, gets a little older and we see how his personality develops a bit more, I'll likely bestow yet another blog name on him.  We have time.

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The long-predicted Republican "tsunami" did not occur in the US during the elections on 2 Nov, at least not to the extent certain so-called pundits were predicting.  Still, it was a bad night for the Democrats generally.  Yes, there were losses in the House and Senate, but Democrats did retain the majority in the Senate.  Harry Reid, the much-maligned and Republican-targeted Senate Majority Leader managed to squeak through an election that would not have been as tight had voters actually understood what they were voting for.  But Democrats did lose their majority in the House and I, for one, am very sorry about that.  My personal belief is that yes, it was a difficult year politically for whichever party was in power, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) fell into the bad old habits of targeting certain states instead of continuing the "50-state strategy" so well implemented by Howard Dean.

As a Dean admirer, I have been appalled at how he was literally shunted aside after he had done so much for the party nationally.  It was not that he wanted to remain at the DNC.  He didn't.  But as a medical doctor himself, and as a politican who had already managed to implement health care reform at the state level when he was governor of Vermont, he should have at least had his request for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) treated with serious consideration.  But he was unceremoniously tossed aside because it was felt by the "Powers That Be" that he would be too "partisan."

I really hate the false equivalencies that seem to hamper liberals generally.  In the name of "free speech," some seem to believe that deliberate lies, smears, distortions and slander should be treated as respectfully as fact-based logic.  In such cases, liberals will always lose because we respect truth, as should all.  So why are fact-based "partisanship" and standing up to bullies who name-call, demean and have no interest in civil discourse bad things?  Those who ultimately defeated fascists and Nazis had to stand up to them first.  In many cases, this meant that they also lost their lives.  We should have at least a modicum of the same courage.