Monday, December 26, 2016

A Recipe For Disaster

On January 31st my mother June Rosenberg passed away. Since in many ways she is still with me, I’ve written this letter to her.

Dear Mom,

It’s been almost a year since you died. At first I was relieved for you that you no longer had to live through the process of losing your memory and I didn’t have to witness it. It was so painful.

Since that initial reaction has worn off, I’m remembering all the times before that and I miss you more. Especially toward the end of this election campaign, there were times when I wanted to call you so we could commiserate. Of course, I couldn’t so I’d thank God that you didn’t live to see it. That’s been my biggest comfort every day since November 8th.

Something happened this week though that I wished I could call you about. We would have had a good laugh together. Can you imagine – my blog has been hacked by Russian hackers. Don’t ask what that means but they’re spying on me and they have messed up the blog so that people can’t read it. Don’t worry that I’ve flipped out. I know it’s them because in the statistics, I see the largest number of my readers are in Russia. Besides that, I keep getting anonymous comments that don’t make any sense. Sometimes they’re just a bunch of numbers and I’ve had to send them to spam. Don’t ask. Who do they think I am - Hillary Clinton?

So I’m thinking of sending them a comment in reply. Let me know what you think.

Dear Russian Hackers,

I don’t know why you’re bothering to hack my blog, but I kind of feel sorry for you because you’ve wasted a whole lot of your time. You’re not going to find out anything from me that you couldn’t find out by reading the newspapers. I’m just a private American citizen exercising my freedom of speech while I still have it. The events I write about are all public knowledge that I’m merely expressing my opinion about.

It reminds me of two funny FBI stories. One was an old friend of mine was a member of the Communist Party. The FBI sent an agent to spy on him. They spent so much time together that they got to be friends. When the FBI agent’s dog ran away, my friend helped him find his dog.

During the Vietnam War, my friends and I went to an anti-war march. We met a man who was wearing a “May 2nd Movement” campaign button. I asked him what that was and he told us. About a year later, one of my friends told me that he read a story about an FBI agent spending six months with the May 2nd Movement and finding out everything we did in our ten-minute conversation. I guess bureaucracies have something in common all over the world.

I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you’d just say you’re sorry and unjumble my blog. While you’re at it, could you do me a favor? My aunt was a great cook and she made fabulous beef Stragonoff. I lost the recipe so could you send one to me? If you tell me your real name, I’ll mention it in my blog.

And that’s another thing: Just a friendly tip: You’d probably do better if you used an American name on your comments and improved your English grammar. Just saying.

Happy New Year. May 2017 be a more peaceful one for all of us.


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