Bang those pots and pans and get the mammogram now
The loss of Molly Ivins leaves a gaping hole in the world. I have loved her since I lived in Texas. She epitomized the smart, sassy, rowdy Texas kind of belle I adore. Amy Goodman has written as fine a farewell as I've read to date, noting that Molly "first questioned authority, then skewered it." It brought tears to my eyes and is a fine remembrance of a fine woman. What a loss.
I've borrowed this photo from the Texas Observer, Molly's home for many years.
I've borrowed this photo from the Texas Observer, Molly's home for many years.
Labels: great liberals, memorials, politics
posted by BigAssBelle at 7:03 PM
5 Comments:
I had the privilige of meeting Molly Ivins at a writer's conference about 5 years ago. She struck me as a warm curmudgeon. She was wonderful. She had a keynote speech, where she discussed the awful trend of humor that was skewering the poor and unfortunate, "...and that's just vulgar" she said, in that voice of hers strained through a carton of cigarettes and Texas.
I only heard of her passing the other day, and I'm very much saddened by this.
Loved reading Molly's columns. She'll be sorely missed.
Thought about you today, Miss Belle. NPR said that reporters were diving off the sinking ship "Lame Duck Bush," covering the democrats and new presidential candidates instead.
Love to hear this!
I am still bummed out about Molly Ivins leaving us. Though I doubt she would have given the idiot in chief a break until he'd left office. (maybe not even then) I want the the media to keep that s.o.b. in the cross hairs. He just keeps getting away with way too much.
Her loss is grievous, not only for who she was, but because of what too many of her colleagues aren't: journalists.
Belle, reading so many of your posts below about you and your husband in the ER reminds me of the mind-bending experience of hospitals.
In an atmosphere starkly defined by life and death, interactions with staffers and other patients distort reality as the real world rarely does. Don't let it skew your sense of which way is up.
When I was last a patient, 15 years ago, I was in for three days. Flowers were just the start.
Nurses and P.A.s fussed over me as they barely tended to a man with terminal cancer who shared my room. I swear I got more Demerol (I have never, EVER had such a high, not for want of trying).
You see, I was a rare and difficult case; my surgeon, a professor at Harvard Medical School, demonstrated a class with me.
Somehow, I lived to tell about my...dental braces.
In a day when a white-collar job in Boston meant superb coverage at the best hospitals in the world, a renowned surgeon made the decision to bust, chop, and slide my lower jaw back to correct an underbite and make the braces work better. This was hardly necessary, just more convenient and correct, and of course, paid up.
I did not complain. I read enough to know to keep my mouth shut and do as the good doctor said. Essentially, she did to me what used to be done to recklessly ambitious Hollywood starlets.
If you have ever seen before-and-after pictures of Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Loretta Young, you know what a difference molars and centimeters of jaw can make. It is not, strictly speaking, plastic surgery, because it is more radical.
While friends and hospital staff treated me as if I were halfway to death's door, I was in fact in the process of winning an, unheralded, life-changing lottery. Sure, I couldn't know what would happen, and there were sharp but VERY brief complications. Not like my roommate, who eventually died, and in great pain unless his relationship with the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital took some upturn I didn't know about.
It was not a good thing, it seemed, to whine about your pain even if you were in incredible pain, as he clearly was.
I did not whine, because I had absolutely nothing to whine about.
Yet I got the drugs. And when my jaw was healed and unwired two months later, and I was back on solid food, I had changed from a chubby, quite plain young man into...well, let's just say that I will never forget Dr. Meredith August. Nor that hospitals, like so much in our lives, are anything but a meritocracy.
-Freddy in P'town
I miss her so. One of my fondest dreams was to one day have dinner with Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. Guess that'll happen later on, in the big barbecue pit in the sky ...
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