MELANIA and ME by STEPHANIE WINSTON WOLKOFF : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

I was handed the hard-back copy that a friend had just bought and read and will be passing this book to another reader shortly. I know what certain critiques and articles expect me to think about this book but I'm not dictated to.

This book is one long immensely detailed bitch about being overworked, underpaid, disrespected, and under-appreciated in the work place, and ultimately in a friendship. Most of us have had that experience.  I know I have.  That might be my life story - or yours - but I wasn't a child of privileged, able to put a toe into prestigious Vogue to work there first.  Events I planned and saw through were not benefits for the Met's fashion ball. I've met a few celebrities and a few millionaires but my social life is not among them.  Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was immensely qualified for the assignment she was vetted for by First Lady Melania Trump. That she kept at it to the point of suffering financially and health-wise, is her fault. She was not one of us who has to work for a living.  Not that I think it's wrong to be well off and ambitious. But why do us commoners stay at jobs we hate?

The story of the chaotic Trump White House is as expected, sorry to say, and not a surprise.

The book reads as though S.W.W. was keeping a diary on top of everything else she was working extreme hours on. If not a diary, then a journal or at least a calendar, of her work struggles, including having lawyers work on a contract that might describe her title, responsibility, and pay. 

Very little is said about the FRIENDSHIP that the title of this book depends upon. There are mentions of brief smiley interactions, and many references to emails that are brief and full of emojis.  First Lady Melania actually seems appreciative, if not one to go on and on in her communications.  There are lots of air kisses on both cheeks, so to speak.

THE WORST THINGS YOU CAN SAY ABOUT MELANIA TRUMP after reading this book are the things noone would dare say about JACQUELINE BOUVIER KENNEDY.

That she prefers supporting her husband and his career and taking care of her child, then having a career of her own while also the First Lady.

That she's not in the loop about political issues, though once in a while she has influence on her husband.  She has a mind of her own as he does and is not always cooperative about what others want her to do as First Lady.

That she has very little personal power and then it's hiring staff to advise on fashion, hair, diplomatic expectations, protocol, and entertaining dignitaries.

That she goes off on relaxing vacations alone while others toil.  They are paid after all, while she is not.

That she shows up on the campaign trail not so much.

That she embodies tranquility and it seems that is what President Donald Trump looks forward to and depends on.

I think First Lady Melania Trump has mastered what few women seem to these days - That she is enough.

The real story here is how Trump's grown children, in particular Ivanka Kusher, are present, and domineering and can be sneaky or savvy about sabotaging Melania. It's the story of how a good soldier (Stephanie) on Melania's side goes to battle with Ivanka's side.

For that, Melania must, in my opinion, resort to supreme patience, philosophy, and prayer.

As for the preternaturally tall for his youth, Barron Trump, or his father, the author takes aim to diagnose.  Fair when it's about our President.  Unfair when it is a child.

C 2020  Christine Trzyna

Book Review - All Rights Reserved

HE DIED BUT VISITED ME LAST NIGHT - A MEMBER OF MY OLD WRITING GROUP

The strange dreams continue.  Is it the season?  Or the ongoing threat of Covid-19?

I woke up around 4 am.  My dog had walked through my sewing kit and I could hear buttons and spools - but I woke thinking "needles." She needed to go out.  So did I.

But I managed to fall back asleep.  I remembered three strange dreams. This one was a visit with a member of my short fiction writing group.

This man was a bit of a mystery.  I first met him at a writing class focused on short fiction at a community college night class. He wrote the shortest of short stories.  One pagers.  If you're wondering how a one pager can qualify as a short story, well, if there is the slightest change in a character's viewpoint, that would qualify.

If I knew him today, I would suggest that each short was actually a chapter.  He wrote scenarios that seemed to focus on people with mental illness.

He never stayed to chat or get personal after we had critiqued each other's stories.

He would stand up, bid us a hearty fare-well, and walk out in an almost military fashion, with his notebooks in one hand. 

Then one day I was telling a friend about this man and his work when he said, "Wait a minute.  I think my dad knows this man!"  And not only did his dad know the man, but they had worked together, and his dad had introduced him to his wife.  Who, it turned out, became seriously mentally ill.

I felt that this man did not want our group to know this.

So one day I encountered him and I spit it out. "I know so and so.  I'm friends with his son.  I know."

To which he said nothing in response.

But I felt maybe I had relieved him some.

In my dream I was wearing my reading glasses.  My reading glasses are really ugly.  I made a mistake choosing them. The first thing I saw was that he came up to me wearing the same reading glasses.  He was smiling.  I said "I thought you were dead!"

In waking life I have been thinking this for some time - years.  One day I happened upon a newspaper I don't normally read and there was a one liner.  It said So and So was dead, as if it was the least someone could do.  There was absolutely no mention of a wife, family, friend, or children. Somehow I assumed it was him.

In the dream he was sitting with a woman I didn't recognize at all but knew to be his wife.  They were together, well, and happy.  They had two young people with them - perhaps grandchildren?  What was most important to me was that they were happy.  I looked over this woman, who I had never seen in waking life, thoroughly.  Now if I ever see a photo of her and I learn it is her, I'll probably get one of those shocks up my spine.

C 2020 Christine Trzyna

All Rights Reseved

HE DIED SEVEN YEARS AGO and WAS IN MY DREAM YESTERDAY MORNING

Yesterday morning I woke from a dream.

Someone I knew years ago was in that dream. So unexpectedly.

I knew he had died about seven years ago. I hadn't been thinking of him. I hadn't been thinking of him when I'd learned he died years ago either. I hadn't had any contact or knowledge of him in years before that. 

We had not been speaking for some time. It wasn't that we were angry. We just had lost words. He was a man of few words. Uncomplicated and simple you thought, until you heard his lyrics.

I'm not claiming to be a psychic. I think everyone is a bit psychic. For many years now it's happened that I've learned that someone who was once in my life and who I haven't thought about in years, has died. Usually something odd happens. Like I read a newspaper I don't usually and see an obit. Or I have a thought about them. So I check the Internet.  

A little more than seven years ago, one afternoon, I suddenly thought "I wonder if he ever put out a CD?" So I went on the Internet and instead found out he had died, about three months earlier. In his case there was no obit. But there were memorials. There were postings in on-line newsletters. There was a YouTube video of an event where he was given an award that made me tear up. Once athletic and strong, he was weak in a wheel chair, only able to stand for a moment to say "Thank You." Once a man who slept around and had too many women, he had found the one for him. He had married and had children since I knew him.

I contained sadness.

This man was in my dream yesterday morning.

We were in a restaurant. Maybe a salad bar. Not fast food. It was bright and airy. I looked at him and the sun seemed to be shining on spots of his pale skin. We were both standing there, looking into each other's eyes. He was youngish and healthy. His sleeveless tank showed off natural muscle. He was silent.  So was I. That continued. In my mind I was thinking I had recently met up with him in another dream but I couldn't remember it. I wanted to talk to him. Arrange a time. He knew that. I felt he could read my mind. I felt there was something I didn't know.

Then I saw a cameo of a woman. I think I know who this woman was, though I can't remember her name. She and I were friendly. I don't know if she's still alive.  In the dream, she spoke. She told me that he was going to a certain city in Texas and to a certain type of medical facility. She was very exact.

I woke up.

I immediately put in the name of this city and the words she had spoken in my search engine.  I was astounded by what I read about this place.

I realized I had been meaning to send his best friend a letter for the last seven years. I hand wrote it. Then I searched for an address one can send an old fashioned hand-written snail mail letter to.

And no, the man who was in my dream does not have a CD out. Not one.  No YouTube videos of him singing. No web site. Nothing. His wife and children also seem to have disappeared. 

I fear his music is lost. That he let it go to have a life different from the one he was living when I knew him.

I can hear some of his songs in my head.  Hear him singing like a choir boy.

C 2020 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved

HE DIED and I IMAGINED HIM ALIVE FOR YEARS NOT KNOWING

As a teenager, I attended art classes on Saturdays at a famous museum and then a famous university. At the museum each week an honor roll was called. I was on it frequently. I also remember many of the names called as if it were yesterday. I think they called them alphabetically.  Hypnotize me and take me back to that time and I could announce the whole list.

Some of these people were my friends or friends of friends. We all had a small sense that we were special because we had been invited selectively from all around the county.

In the end almost all the people who got full scholarships to the famous university classes were male. I sometimes wonder about that. Was it sexism? Was it sexuality? Was it that the people who were behind these classes just thought that men artists had more potential and would be more serious about pursuing art? There were many women on those honor roll lists. 

So one afternoon back in the day, when I was visiting my friend Sandy, my favorite classmate, who lived near her friend Robert, a name called, a person who got the full scholarship, she introduced me to Robert. He was a very tall teen from a German background in a mostly Jewish neighborhood. 

We went over to his house.  We sat in his living room. He and Sandy were chatty.

I remember that day because of the finery about the way he spoke. The thinness of his fingers. A seriousness about him. And also because he had a slobbering Saint Bernard with a small barrel under his chin.  (Why do people make Saint Bernard's carry barrels?  Maybe this dog carried Robert's cash or stash?) The dog got on my lap and slobbered. They all told me this was because he "liked" me. I hated his slobber. I wanted him off my lap. You would never guess at that point in my life how much I would come to love dogs. They all thought it was sort of funny that the more I resisted the Saint Bernard, the more he "liked" me.

Every once in a while I would think of Robert, such a promising artist. Had he gone on to afford the extreme tuition of the university? Did he still paint? Was his work represented in galleries?  Maybe a museum?

So, one day I had the urge to check. I put his name into the Internet and up came an obituary.  He had been dead for years. He had died young in another city and state. The obit suggested that he had long had family in this other state. I wondered when he moved. What he did for a living when he was alive.  And what killed him.  Was it a car accident? A strange disease? Cancer of some sort? AIDS?

Then it bothered me, the way I had carried him around as a live person when he had been dead most of my life.

Even as I write this I see his face.

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved

THE NEW GOOGLE BLOGGER FORMAT IS AN UTTER HORROR -

I'm DESPISING it.  You have to scroll more - the lines are CARTOONISHLY LARGE - for CHILDREN or THE LEGALLY BLIND. Every post features a picture block.  I rarely post pictures. The dates are obscure - they should be where they were - easy to find.  I would have difficulty finding what I want to take down. TOTALLY DISCOURAGING.  TOTALLY FORCED UPON the BLOGGER.  The so called LEGACY BLOGGER, which I would be happy with forever - gone.  I clicked to return to it multiple times.  I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS ABOUT HITS, or how my LAST POST IS DOING.  That is not my priority.  Why is it YOURS GOOGLE?  FOCUSING ON THE NUMBER OF HITS YOU GET OFTEN INFLUENCES THE WRITER TO WRITE FOR HITS - LATCHING ON TO NEWS - LOOKING FOR SOME SCANDAL, SOME HYPER-INTENSIVE SUBJECT ALREADY BEING PLAYED OUT.  IT CAN CAUSE YOU TO BE A FOLLOWER INSTEAD OF A LEADER.  TO BE DOMESTICATED INSTEAD OF RADICAL.  

Update March 2021

I'm still struggling using this hideous new horrible blogger. It says published when a post is a draft. It holds the date you started writing it, prepublushing, even when you've instructed it to be posted at a specific date in the future. 

DEBUSSY - CLAIR DE LUNA - MAN PLAYS PIANO FOR 80 YEAR OLD ELEPHANT

An 80 year old female, nearly blind... and look at those ears showing her appreciation!

LOAN ME A DIME : BOZ SCAGGS

RUSSIAN LADY TELLS ME DEMOCRATS CREATED CORONAVIRUS : TALKING TO STRANGERS

I see a lady waiting for the local community bus.

She says "Does Dash stop here?"

She is not wearing a mask.  She is fat and weary and sitting on the bench.

I say, "It does, but you can't get on without a mask."

She whips one out of a pants pocket with disgust.  "I hate these things," she says.

"I do too, but it's the least we can do."

"It's the Democrats... They started this."

"I'm a Democrat, " I say, being brave.  "As are my friends and as were my parents.  Democrats did not start Coronavirus - 19.  It kills them, just like it kills Republicans."

"Well. It's Bill Gates," she says.  "He started it so he could make money with his vaccine."

Why do I argue with such people? "Bill Gates is one of many people investing in science for the vaccine or the cure."

The bus pulled up.  She put her shitty mask on and got on it.  Propelled her mass.

And - this is yet one more NEW conspiracy theory I have heard about the Virus.

C 2020 All Rights Reserved  Christine Trzyna

BLACK VOTES MATTER

BLACK VOTES MATTER
A constructive way to participate and count.

AMERICA : SIMON and GARFUNKEL

LIVING IN THE USA : STEVE MILLER

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME : DR. JOHN

JOHNNY CASH : ONE PIECE AT A TIME

But this one always makes me laugh.  And, I think, I once had a relative with this mentality.

QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE - WHAT ABOUT ME

So sad that the words to this song which came out in the 1970's are too true today.  That's Dino Valente, the lead singer.

BERNIE SANDERS SAYS YOU CANNOT SIT THIS ELECTION OUT

VANITY FAIR HIVE - BERNIE SANDERS ENDORSES JOE BIDEN by Abigail Tracy

EXCERPT: Sanders said, "At this moment we have a president who's trying to undermine democracy and move us into an authoritarian form of society.  Those are huge issues. Unbelievable.  And I think Joe understands that.