Holiday Blues

[H2O Man]

I'd like to wish a happy holiday season to all who enjoy this time of year. For others, it can be a lonely, depressing time. I tend to be half-way in between, and always look forward to it being over. Since there is zero chance that I will be unwrapping Sarah McLachlan under my Christmas tree -- I don't have one -- I will concentrate on other things.

I am glad that on Christmas day, there will be a live podcast, "Surviving the Survivor," will be on. Nothing says "holiday cheer" quite like a true crime show. It's hosted by Joel Waldman, an Emmy Award winning journalist, and his mother mother Karmela, a Holocaust survivor. I enjoy the show, which features outstanding guests, on youtube.
https://survivingthesurvivor.com/

The show will focus on the criminal cases resulting from the 2014 murder of law professor Dan Markel. Last week, a journalist on the show said the first half of the time since was "CSI Tallahassee, the second half a Shakespearean tragedy. It appears there was political pressure preventing police and prosecutors from charging members of the Adelson family, perhaps connected to the father's close friendship with a powerful judge.

The parents are vocal supporters of the ex-president who lives in their state. Daughte Wendi is currently uncharged, but is represented by the top attorney currently representing the ex-president known as "the defendant." Their recently convicted son had hired the defendant's jury consultant for his trial. Yet it took the jury a mere 3.5 hours to convict Charlie.

During Charlie's trial, tapes were played that the jury knew implicated him. Most trial watchers think they implicate his mother Donna, as well. Yet in the first week of Charlie's post-conviction incarceration, he and Donna spoke on the telephone for about 35 hours. And, as everyone knows, jail calls are recorded.

Among other things, Donna tells her son that she and her husband were considering taking their own lives. They discussed going to Vietnam, because it doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US. She also mentions China or Korea as potential options. But the FBI nailed her as she was almost able to board a jet. She was placed in the same jail her son was in, though he is now at a reception center for state prison.

A week ago, I posted an essay on my late friend Rubin's experience in prison. It is hard for even a strong man. There is a powerful scene in the movie "The Hurricane" that shows him having a breakdown when he is first incarcerated and in solitary. The phone tapes show Charles Adelson beginning a process. Although none of the poscasts will identify this, it is best understood in the context of Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. Hence, for those seven days of phone calls, Charlie repeats, "I don't believe it," in some variation over 100 times each day. For the life he once knew is dead.

Jails and prisons are unpleasant places. Charlie tells of feces, urine, and blood on the floor, walls, and ceiling of his cell after being convicted. His mother's lawyer included Donna taking great offense to a member of the jail staff saying that although she was used to the privileges of being an older, rich, white woman, those do not translate to inside the jail. Even though I do not approve of hiring hit men to kill your daughter or sister's ex-husband, and find both Charlie and Donna obnoxious, I can feel bad for even guilty people facing life sentences.

I hope none of my ex-in-laws, especially those who fancy themselves out laws, read this. But doing steroids and cocaine will impare your thinking. Dealing in them -- Charlie is taped selling steroids to a guy in his gym -- doesn't make you a tough guy. Riding the baloney pony with a gal who also sleeps with a thug does not qualify you as a thug. Think Judith Exner. Trying to hire a hit man to kill someone is a bad idea that is curiously in the news more frequently in recent years.

There are only five types of people you will encounter. The first type says no. The second type will go to the police, and you'll hire an undercover cop. The third type reportedly got $50,000 from Charlie and disappeared. The next type is the type that gets caught and leads to you arrest. The real ones that get away will kill the person who hired them after collecting payment for killing the other person. They just aren't nice people.

So, if you aren't hanging out with family and/or friends tomorrow, there is the option of watching and discussing "true crime." And realizing that you are lucky that you weren't born an Adelson.

[MagickMuffin]

1. Season Greetings, bah humbug, with a bonus of Holiday Cheer

This story sounds intriguing, I haven’t heard a lot about it, but perhaps this podcast will enlighten me.

I am curious if these are the same Adelson’s as the Las Vegas casino owner and the current owners of the Dallas Mavericks?

I wasn’t able to find a connection through wiki.

[H2O Man]

5. I think it is

both my duty and right to be the grumpy old man of the extended clanna, especially at holiday time. This was a little hard this year, as I gathered with my four children, their SOs -- and one's two daughters, and my one-year old grandson. I gave it a good try, though. One the college student asked me what I wanted to be as a kid, I said, "An orphan." She thought it was a giggle.

I am unaware of any connect with the Vegas fellow.

I think that "true crime" such as this is interesting. As noted, one sees the stages of grief. There are lots of lawyers that think Charlie will flip on his sister. Thus, we know that he will be in the bargaining stage soon. A lot of them think the prosecutor already has enough to convict Wendy. While I'm sure they ave more evidence -- pointing one way or the other -- I don't think they currently do. Nor am I sure she was in on the murder of her ex-husband.

Clearly she figured it out qiockly. Again, I like models, and for family systems, I like the idea of a mobile over an infant's crib. How each family system attempts to find balance is fascinating.

[StClone]

2. I love Sarah, but another Canadian redid that song that version is one of my Xmas favs

Lennon Stella and Marc Scibilia cover:

[H2O Man]

6. Very nice!

Thank you for sharing that. Much appreciated. Although I've heard a number of versions, I had not heard this before. So, again, thanks!

It does me good to see various people covering this beautiful song by Lennon.

[malaise]

3. Fascinating

Very low key celebrations this year- will have dinner with close friends tomorrow
Enjoy whatever you dummy friend.

[H2O Man]

7. I found out

that two of my friends recently were moved into the Vet's Home near me. I plan to go see them tomorrow. Other than that, I'll likely just stay at home. Likely talk with my siblings. And maybe a couple old friends, so we can compare aches & pains, complain about them and the music kids listen to these days.

[DFW]

4. As an execption, me, too

It is the UN General Assembly here at our house. My daughter living in New York is here with her Russian-Israeli-Amerian husband and their two sons. Our younger daughter from Frankfurt is also here with her man and their two daughters, who are already speakign amazing English. Our easy-going nephew came in from Kyiv in the Ukraine. Eighteen hours by car (the trains were fully booked) from Kyiv to Warszawa, and then the 70 minute flight to Düsseldorf. He has just been told he will be stationed there for at least 11 more months. From here, he is going to visit some friends in Scotland, and then taking a week in southern Spain, to be reminded what the sun looks like.

Rounding out the cast of characters is my wife's 96 year old mom, who just had Covid twice, is already 80% deaf and about 98% blind. She was in an awful state, and my wife would never have had her come, except that the institutions where we might have been able to place her (we specified price no object for the next 3 weeks) were completely full. We couldn't very well leave her here to die on her own, something I almost expected when she first got here, she was in that bad a shape. She has since recovered a little. So, my wife has canceled her trip to the USA with me. She insisted I go, and so I will, but she sees no choice for herself. She will stay until her mom is provided for, understandably. This was just fate's cruel trick on us this year.

So, for the first time since we started going (every year since December 2000). I will be going to Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, by myself. There will be LOTS of friends, including one coming from Paris, as well as my brother from Langley, and the usual fascinating cast of characters, but it will be lonely nonetheless. After Renaissance Weekend, we usually then meet up again for a week in New York City, where I have work for a week. She then usually goes on back to Düsseldorf, and I go on to Dallas, then Washington, and then home. If I'm lucky, and I wouldn't bet on it, she'll find a place for her mom in a week, and then come join me in the States, maybe coming with me to Dallas after New York. Five weeks apart is just not something we do. I'm sure I'll handle it, but I just hate the thought of it.

[H2O Man]

8. As Lennon sang,

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Good luck to you & yours, and I hope everything works out the best possible for everyone.

I'm a hermit these days, but all of my children like to travel. My daughter in Boston is marrying a great guy from Denmark, and they go back and forth all the time.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. The Thing about Time

The main thing about time is that we cannot undo the past. Once something happens, it’s done. We must move forward with the memory.

When considering the loss of a loved one, I find the pain never goes away. And with each passing year, I miss those I’ve lost more and more. What keeps me going, really, is the love — for them, those here, and those who will continue the love.

Here’s a poem I found tonight that expresses why the who — in addition to the what — we experience and feel and know truly matter:


The Weight

BY LINDA GREGG

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.
The dignity of being. They slept that way,
knowing each other always.
Withers quivering for a moment,
fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,
width of back. The volume of them, and each other’s weight.
Fences were nothing compared to that.
People were nothing. They slept standing,
their throats curved against the other’s rump.
They breathed against each other,
whinnied and stomped.
There are things they did that I do not know.
The privacy of them had a river in it.
Had our universe in it. And the way
its border looks back at us with its light.
This was finally their freedom.
The freedom an oak tree knows.
That is built at night by stars.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52236/the-weight