Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll running to keep up with GALLOPING GRATITUDE. She writes:

I know what you’re thinking: Ammo, LAST week was Thanksgiving. NOW you choose to talk about “Gratitude”? Did you not get your homework in on time? Ah, but I can explain.

My dearest Orthodox Jewish mentors and friends do not celebrate either Father’s or Mother’s Day as any kind of special day because they believe it sends the wrong message to children that there is only one day a year when you should “honor your father and mother.” When, of course, that is a very prominent Commandment and, in fact, the only one with a reward attached to it (“that your days should be long in the land”).

So borrowing from that philosophy, I am asserting that we should be grateful almost every minute of every day, and not just a day when a meal that takes many hours to prepare is Hoovered up in 20-30 minutes and then we move on to the Three Fs: football, fractious family discussions, and the newly-popular “fart walks.”

I have even read that Gratitude – in the form of keeping a journal in which a person notes three things for which he or she is grateful every night before bed – dials down stress and depression and increases longevity.

I cannot really confirm that in my own family. My dear late Mother, who grew up in the Depression with an outhouse, water hauled to the house in cream cans, and an orange in her stocking as a Christmas gift, was the most relentlessly cheerful and grateful person I have ever known. She did live to 95. On the other hand, Daddy, who was a dear man with many fine qualities, but who was a lifelong depressive and part-time hypochondriac, ALSO lived to 96. So who knows?

People are Frankenstein critters put together by gene pools, environment, personal qualities, parenting, traumatic life experiences, and the strength of our good and bad impulses (our yetzer hara/yetzer hatov).

God, who clearly has a wry sense of humor, decreed that I should be gifted with Mama’s sense of humor but Daddy’s depressive nature. But then He thought a minute and added, “And letteth us also put in the manic part for twice the fun. For lo, this girlchild shall know not the plateaus of life, yea, only high peaks and low valleys. And her mantra shall be that of my favorite country singer, Merle Haggard, ‘Always On A Mountain When I Fall.’” And it was so.

Besides the “goes without saying blessings” – freedom to worship our God, decent health at our advanced age, living in the greatest country in the history of the world, Trump’s election, my beloved husband, awesome son, terrific extended family, kind generous friends, the Bill of Rights, Israeli moral and technological superiority, and Air Conditioning in Arizona – I would like to list my appreciation for a few other things:

*That as my family and friend pools have been whittled down considerably by normal aging and grievous loss, that we are afforded the opportunity to create new family groupings cobbled together from chance encounters, neighbors, colleagues and co-thinkers. That Joe and I have connected with so many of you is truly one of the main blessings of my life.

*That conservatives are just SO much funnier than the shrieking hateful nut cases on the other side. A late-night comic who has relied for a couple of decades on “clapter” rather than laughter eventually loses his “funny compass” and cannot tell what is genuinely surprising and clever from what is just ugly and mean. I laugh more scrolling through my Friday comments than I ever have at 90 percent of the current crop of comedians (with the notable exception of the “neutral” or conservative ones).

*I am grateful that DEI worked so spectacularly well that the Democrats were absolutely FORCED to serve forth a shockingly inarticulate and stupid woman just because of the color (light beige) of her skin. (Hoisted on their own retard.) Undoubtedly, this worked to our advantage all the way down the line as the money-burning decision-makers on her campaign staff made every wrong and stupid decision possible. James Carville, who despite looking like ET’s elderly, furious grandfather, actually led two successful campaigns, is positively apoplectic over what he regards as the long-term destruction of the Democrat Party. But who on Team Kamala would have consulted an old, white, Southern guy?

*I am grateful, yea, joyful, that James Carville holds grudges and has called for a complete and open audit of how Kamala and staff managed to burn through over a billion dollars, and quite possibly more than two billion. He wants to know, “Where did the money go?” and I think it will be hilarious to learn the answers. Good ON ya, Jimmy. Now do the COVID money.

*I am grateful that when I need a dentist, my Dr. K. is always available. She is cheerful, professional, and will work on somebody strapped up! It had SEEMED to me that a tooth was kind of loose. It has been a very long time since a loose tooth was cause for celebration and the possible improvement of my net worth by a dime.

My old friend Denial assured me that I was “overreacting” until finally a few days ago, I had it checked out. It turned out to be a 15-minute procedure (two little Ninja women with many tools doing many things in my mouth at the same time…) in which the diagnosis was “you have a screw loose in your 10 year old implant.” They got an honest-to-God little special screwdriver – not a Phillips – and tightened it right up again! She did warn me that “Susan has a screw loose” was going on my “permanent record.” It will join a very large file.

*I am grateful – as I have mentioned a couple of times before in this space – that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong about there being “no second acts in American life.” Not just wrong but SPECTACULARLY wrong! What a rich, arrogant, drunk doody-head. I barely know anyone who hasn’t “reinvented” himself or herself as they changed jobs or retired or just discovered a passion they didn’t know they had. Or knew they had but had no time to pursue. So, take that, F.

Heck, this very column you are reading is a monument to a hobby that got way out of hand. And I must also mention the kindness and generosity of the Power Line Boys to allow me to come and play in their reindeer games. More gratitude!

I am going to single out just two people to disprove F. Scott’s contention. As it happens, they have both written books and they are both men. Did OTHER conservative confabs have a Professor of Botany who organized a taste test for the hotness factor of chili peppers? No, they did not, but we did. And John Choinski has written and produced a beautiful book called Super Market Botany, suitable for coffee tables, for perusing in a leisurely fashion or just leafing through as a work of art. It is in color and, in a word, gorgeous. A little pricey, not crazy, listed on Amazon at $39, but worth every penny!

Geoff Brown, has already distinguished himself in his chosen genre of historical fiction with his first work, The Coxswain, an absolutely fascinating story of a young man of conscience serving in the Coast Guard in World War II.

His latest work is Belly Robbers. It continues in the same vein with a most unlikely protagonist, an observant New York Jew who is an Army Cook doing his best to keep kosher in an Army whose primary source of protein is SPAM! But this is no light-hearted comedy. A starving Army is a losing Army and soldiers must be fed multiple times a day even in battle conditions.

It is a very intense story because our hero, Joshua Benjamin, must not only nourish his fellow soldiers, Jew and gentile, alike. But he must observe the strictest standards of cleanliness to keep them safe from food poisoning and dysentery, even in the frozen fields of the Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. The reader feels the cold, mourns the losses, and roots for the characters she has come to know. Geoff’s book is also only available at Amazon, where it is priced to move at $9.00!

Well done, Geoff and John! I am grateful for imagination and creativity.