Happy Birthday, Mister President

The Democrats hounded me mercilessly last week to sign a birthday card for Barack Obama.

I got four or five emails a day, some of them vaguely menacing, as if I were going to lose out on something personally important to me if I didn't step forward and sign. "You haven't signed." "Kathleen, Don't forget to sign the card!" "Some people won’t sign President Obama’s birthday card…" "Kathleen, I don't want to make this awkward, but… It looks like you haven't signed the birthday card for President Obama yet." Now, I respect the office of president, and I still rather admire Barack Obama, though I get a bit nervous about his foreign policy from time to time. He should live and be well. But I don't feel that he and I are on greeting card terms. Does he send me a greeting card on my wedding anniversary? Not even my husband does that. So how is it that I owe him a birthday card?

All this is yet another feature of the hated twenty-first century. My touchstone for these events is simple. Would Eleanor Roosevelt have done this sort of thing, hounding me to sign birthday cards for Franklin? "Kathleen, if you don't sign this birthday card, Franklin will think you haven't got his back!" Hardly.  In the old days when we sent people to Washington they did the work we sent them to do (as far as we knew) and left us the hell alone.

I knew perfectly well what would happen after I signed the "card." Another screen would pop up and badger me to give the Democrats five dollars.

Whatever happens, the Democrats are after me for five more dollars. Boehner is triumphing over us! Give us five dollars. Boehner is weeping in rage! Give us five dollars. We're winning! We're losing! Send five dollars. I read recently that the Republicans' absurd lawsuit against Barack Obama is causing torrents of money to flow into the Democratic coffers, mostly donations from women. Women! What kind of suckers are we?

As I understand it, Karl Rove collected untold billions from those who could afford it (Let's face it, I can't) and poured them into the last election, whereupon his candidate lost just the same. So how is my five dollars going to improve the country? Here's what you people in Washington should do:  Fire the social media hounds and hire someone to fix the bridges. Pay attention to your work. Take time off from running for office and produce some useful legislation. Improve the country. We could use some help here.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Security!

Nearly everyone I know who uses Yahoo! for an email provider has had the Yahoo! mail account hacked sometime in the last couple of years, strangers sending out messages over the rightful owner's signature. Russians (okay, Russians and others, let's not be bigots) get hold of the password and use the email account to distribute spam and malware. But you don't have to be on Yahoo!. It can happen to anybody. It happened to me, just last week, on my Host and Store account.

How I knew that this was going on was by the messages that bounced back from the "postmaster" of email, undeliverable, sent from my address. All in Cyrillic. The Russians, those clever devils, are at it again. Actually one of the messages was in Italian, but it was addressed to Yuri somebody-or-other. The message was clearly spam, couched in the form of a job offer: click here to get a good job and turn your life around. Right. I'll be sure to do that, right after I send the Nigerians my bank account number.

Anyway, as a result of having my email account hacked last week I changed my email password. It's a good idea to do that at regular intervals anyway, for all your passwords.

Then the news broke about Heartbleed, which isn't even a hack, or a virus, but a back door that somebody left open when they put the open-source security code together that's supposed to keep the hackers out of many sites. What it does is enable knowledgeable hackers to steal your passwords, maybe your Social Security number, maybe your bank account number, maybe your phone number. Does Host and Store use this open-source code for security? I don't even know. They were too small to be interviewed. I do know that they haven't re-upped the security certificate for my website, not since they've been handling it, so that I get a warning message every time I go to open my mail. But I digress.

Heartbleed. It's everywhere, almost. If you want to know about a particular site, here's a link you can use to inquire: https://lastpass.com/heartbleed/. Although it might not be entirely effective, given that it says that Host and Store's web site doesn't even exist. Bottom line, you might want to stay off the internet for another few days, and then change your passwords. If you change a password before a patch is in place, the hackers can get it right away anyhow, if they want to, or so say the knowing ones.

As for me, I recommend putting nothing out on the internet that you wouldn't want to see on a billboard in Times Square. That includes birthdays. You won't find my birthday on Facebook. I assume you wish me a happy birthday, whenever it is. I wish you one too. It'll be happier if criminals aren't stealing your identity.

Yours in paranoia,

Kate Gallison

Ten Things I'm Not Going to Do

My birthday is this week. It's one of those momentous birthdays. When my mother had this birthday, some thirty years ago, she was in a coma and had four days left to live. Nevertheless I woke up this morning perfectly happy, and I still am, although my literary career is in the toilet and there are a number of other hard truths I find myself unable to deny. Hey, at least I'm not going to be dead in four days, that I know of.

So, a list of things that, let's face it, I'm not going to do. Not going to have to do, not going to be able to do, or just not going to do.

1. Die right away.
2. Write my autobiography. Many of you will be happy about that. You know who you are.
3. Lose the twenty pounds. If they're not gone by now they're here to stay.
4. Make a pants suit out of the loud wool plaid stuff I got last summer. On sober reflection I feel that such a garment would make me look as if I had dressed myself as a racetrack tout for Halloween. Instead I think I'll make a poncho out of it.
5. Have Christmas dinner with my ex-husband and his wife.
6. Give another dime to a political party.
7. Forget to take my pills.
8. Pass up a chance to go out to dinner with Harold. This is Lambertville, after all, where you can't get a bad meal. Except maybe in our house when I'm trying a new recipe.
9. Perform a tap dance in public. (Although I have a great pair of shoes for it.)
10. Master the English concertina. I keep saying I'll take it up again, but…

Okay, enough of this. I'm going to go have fun now. Carpe diem and all that. You go have some fun too. Life is short.

© 2013 Kate Gallison

Gimlet-eyed

For many years, my mother gave me literary themed calendars for Christmas.

The first of these was a simple calendar that listed the birthdays of various writers of note. I remember my tremendous dismay when I turned to my birthday, July 23, and discovered the name of Coventry Patmore.

If the sight of his name doesn’t start you quoting from his most famous work, Angel in the House, you’re not alone. I remember going to the library to learn more about my birthday twin. Librarians, who like psychotherapists, hear everything and can keep a secret, understood my distress as they described this poem about the embodiment of feminine perfection. They did not expect to gladden my heart. I’m sure Victorian scholars could offer more nuance and context, but suffice it to say that the angel in the house is obedient to her husband and devoted to her children. Not the kind of role model I was looking for at the time. The Angel in the House gets to be but she doesn’t get to act.

Years passed. Literary calendars got savvier. One Christmas I turned to July 23 to find that Coventry Patmore had been replaced by Raymond Chandler. RAYMOND CHANDLER!!

Honor. Despair. Ennui. ALCOHOL!! My kind of guy.

So every year around my birthday I spend a little time with Mr. Chandler. Several years ago, I tried a gimlet. According to Terry Lennox, Philip Marlowe’s client in The Long Goodbye, a proper gimlet is made with half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice. I don’t know if my gimlet was made using that recipe, but it was uninspiring. I returned to the world of the Rob Roy and the vodka martini.

I’ve never lost my taste for Chandler’s prose. This is Terry Lennox’s paean to the perfect moment in a bar:

‘I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and pull the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that’s wonderful.’

Happy Birthday, Raymond Chandler (a few days late)

Stephanie Patterson

*NB: If you go to youtube you can hear Ian Fleming interviewing Raymond Chandler. Some of it is hard to hear, but it’s well worth a listen.

Happy Birthday to My Taurean Twin, Linda Fairstein

It was my birthday. Little did I know, trudging to school along a sandy path on Willoughby Beach in Norfolk, Virginia, that on that same day a little girl was born in Westchester County, New York, who decades later would play a big role in my adult life.

Of all the bonds on this fragile planet, so full of surprises, finding another human who was born on your own birthday is a galactic coincidence unlike any other. Nationality, age, gender, ethnicity—none of these has the same tie as knowing that—in the light of eternity—this other human being first saw the light of day on the same calendar marker that was assigned to you!

I'd never met anyone born on my day, May 5, so years later, when I read that a stellar crime writer, someone whose books I'd devoured for what had been decades, a notable whose speeches I'd been glued to at meetings of writers' groups, was also a May 5 child, I felt an instant bond, and knew then, even if I never met this literary giant, I'd be her champion for life!

I finally did meet Linda Fairstein, as a fellow member of the Board of Directors of the New York Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America.

What charming games the universe plays with human lives!

I'd read every book by this gifted writer, was immersed in every plot of her novels, after her debut novel, Final Jeopardy, never knowing all those years that there was an ethereal bond between this famous lawyer and star on the world stage of literature and—little ole moi!

Today with over 14 bestselling novels under her legal belt, this talented honor graduate of Vassar and the School of Law of the University of Virginia has won high acclaim in many languages on countless shores. She has created her own unique spot in literary history.

Few writers have transformed historical places and moments in the colorful history of New York City into such memorable word tapestries!

Her novels should be required reading in all courses of New York history, as well as in advanced curricula on American literature.

From Final Jeopardy ( 1996) to Angel of Mercy (July 2013) I join the throngs of readers who are also fans—and wish my Taurean Twin many more years of success, joy and a special place in the annals of literary talent!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

Turning Soot into Gold

Today is my niece’s birthday. I always feel sorry for someone who has a birthday during the holidays. No matter what anyone says, the loot is always less than for someone whose birthday is say—in April or July. It’s really a crime for mothers to give birth in December. They should be more careful in March. I knew someone who refused to give birth on Halloween because she was afraid her child would turn out to be a witch or a ghoul. She held off until 12:01 am. So I know it can be done.

My niece is not resigned to her fate, however. She has learned since she knew how to make lists, to ask for more and look forlorn. Giving guilt trips is her specialty. Make them pity me for being born at such an awkward time, thinks she. Force them to give me more and better gifs to make up for my tragedy, is her philosophy. And it works.

As I go out to shop for her, dirty snow clogging the gutters, a frigid wind biting my nose, the post-holiday sale signs sagging in the shop windows, I find myself on the verge of tears. And I reach deep in my pockets to buy her even more than if she had been born in July.

—Robin Hathaway