I wrote the following post a few minutes ago on Huffington Post under the article/video of Arianna Huffington’s appearance on the Rachel Maddow show.  I reprint my post here for BLOG enjoyment.   

DHC Comment on Huffington Post:

I’m disappointed in you, Arianna.  You are selling a book so I know you have your talking points and they vary depending on what network you are on.  We are weeks away from a crucial election and the obvious question to ask you since you have nothing but negative things to say about Obama is if you would support a primary challenger for Obama in 2012?  You can’t run but someone you support through Huffington Post could. 

Just askin’. 

Today, September 21, is World Alzheimer’s Day. My mother has Alzheimer’s, I have written about her before on this blog. In a matter of just a few years I have lost one of my best friends to this disease. I used to talk with Mom all the time about my life, about her life, about our lives. She, along with Luke, has been one of the major supporters of my writing career and my dreams. She, along with my sister and brother, flew out to LA for the book launch of Dancing on the Cellar Door in 2003. And what a trip it was. My big old antique Lincoln Town Car blew up on the way back from LA to San Diego! But we all survived it, with laughter and love. Was she a perfect mom? No, who could be a perfect mom? I am not a perfect son. But she was as close as you can come. I miss her so much. I visited her in the spring and she knew me. That is no longer true, just six months later. I think she recognizes my voice on the phone but she can’t get her mind to form the words “David.” And she’s young, that’s the thing - she turned 76 this past July. Looking back, though, there were little things I didn’t think much of at the time but that now I recognize as being the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. She knew it was happening to her, too. In a way she made plans for what she knew was coming, she remarried her 2nd and 3rd husband for the 3rd time and he is now her caregiver. I read today in a column that Maria Shriver wrote on Huffington Post that most Alzheimer’s caregivers are women. This is not true in Mom’s case. She has had a hell of a stunning life - from eloping to marry my father when she was 20, he was 45, to raising 2 then 3 kids on her own. She rarely complained about her “life” although she did complain about her husbands - 4 in all !!! She crammed a lot of living into her life. I know if she could have one more non-Alzheimer’s day, she would celebrate her children and I would tell her to celebrate the advantages she seized - from a girl born in the middle 1930s in the mountains of Virginia to the businesswoman and mother and wives she became. She was fearless. She still is.

I love you, Mom.

copyright, 2010

“Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

– Isocrates, 436-338 BCE, Greek orator and rhetorician.

All I have to say so far about the spectacle unfolding before my eyes in the run up to the November elections is to agree with Hunter S. Thompson when he said: 

“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”