Fourteen years ago, almost to the minute, my father passed into the great beyond. I'm lighting a candle, of course. I may or may not pay my respects at the cemetery. I mean, I should, I want to, but at the same time, my studio is my father's former work shop. I am closer to him there than anywhere else on earth, I think, and what better way to honor his memory today than to work in my studio, under the light that hung in the family store, on a concrete floor stained with Daddy's years of habitation, with photos of him (and my mummy) looking on?

Yeah. Nothing.

Miz Shoes has had quite enough of being quiet, thank you. I've gotten over the shock of the Thing That Cannot Be Named. Back to the blog.

So, when I left the world of corporate America, I let my freak flag fly: I dyed my hair magenta and purple and turquoise and all sorts of happy colors. It made most people shy away from me, just a little, here in my little home town. And that was good. In the last three years, though, there has been some sort of seismic shift in little old ladies. They ALL have fucking purple and turquoise and fairy hair and if you doubt me, go to Disney World and observe the grannies from the flyover states rocking the pink.

One night, the unthinkable happened. I was at a meeting (admittedly, of artists) and some random woman with purple hair got right up in my personal space and did something with her face that was meant to be an ingratiating smile. Then she pointed at my hair and hers and made noise to the effect that we must be soul sisters or something. I was filled with horror. My hair color was meant to be a warning, people, not an invitation. I raced back to my seat and called my hairdresser. Two days later, I had no color and very, very short hair.

This is why we can't have nice things.

And Miz Shoes just doesn't feel like talking about it anymore. For the foreseeable future, this site is going dark. Enjoy the archives.

As you may or may not know, I have that tattooed on my forearm. It's a much needed reminder, some days more than others. It is particularly ironic in light of my recent Baker acting, by a physician I believe to have been motivated not by my best interest, but as a Trump supporter who sneered when he said, "Oh, so it was the election that put you over?" as he signed the paper. I went to my primary care doctor for a pysch referral, because, yes, the election of Der Gropenfuhrer did set off a major depression. That, combined with exhaustion, bronchitis and week of steroids, led to my crying and making a typical drama queen joke that I'd walk into the ocean and end it if it were not for the fact that Marc couldn't collect my insurance, so would never.

TLDR: If you have a history of depression, do not make a suicide joke to your doctor while asking for a psych referral. It results in exactly the same sort of thing that happens when you make a bomb joke in a TSA screening line. I do not recommend it.

What happened after that is pretty unspeakable. Let me just say that had I truly been in the state they thought I was, my treatment at the hands of the ER staff over the next 26 hours would have led to exactly what they feared, or an outright psychotic break. My cousin remarked that they seem to have gone to the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" school of nursing. Big props at this point to "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", which provided me with my mantra for about 36 hours: "I'm not really here!"

In conclusion, Miz Shoes now has enough material for a novel or a standup routine.

Y'know, I had an essay written in my head. It was all about the second coming of my feminism, and it was deep and thoughtful and intended as a public apology to Hillary Clinton for arriving so late to her party. But then, just as I was closing the logical loop, my neighbor trotted over to talk to me. He's very shy, my neighbor. I know this because he never looks me in the eye. Two guesses where he lets the vacant stare linger, as long as one of those choices is NOT my shoes. He told me how cute I looked in my overalls. I should mention that this was the day after Hurricane Mathew swept past, so I was hot, sweaty, without power or hot water, and getting bitten by mosquitoes. I was not in the mood. For G-d's sake Max, I'm 62 years old, I am not cute. Just stop it now. He teased me again. Oh, no My Familial Nickname Used Without My Permission, you stop it right now. Max, I repeated, Just. No. And I slammed the conversational door in his face and continued to pick up fallen limbs.

And then two days later, while I was quietly pulling weeds and rewriting my essay, the young workmen came to take the shutters off my studio. One of them attempted, despite verbal warning from both my husband and his co-worker, to apologize for the anti-Semitic sub-contractor who was their painter. Just the son, he said, right? The father is one of the good ones, isn't he? No, I said, he is not. He was rude and insulting and told me flat out that they did not bid prep work into this job. And then he attempted to mansplain (pause in conversation while I had to define mansplaining: y'know, when a man tries to tell a woman how to do something that she knows damn good an well how to do all on her own?) paint prep to me, an artist who has painted plenty of walls, and my husband the portrait painter? As far I am concerned he is an anti-Semite of the first order and if he ever sets foot on my property again I will call the police and have him charged with trespassing. And you can tell him I said so.

And then I watched the second debate and the fever dream of our national pre-apocalyptic behavior that unfolded in the aftermath. And it hit me.

What the fuck is wrong with you people? Have none of you read the fucking Handmaid's Tale? Or even rented the damned movie? No, really. How did we get from being the nation that sent a man to the fucking moon (with the help of women and minorities in critical positions) to being the nation that allowed Donald Trump to breathe air for free on the same stage as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

I have been a feminist all my damned life, and I have been an active combatant in the war against my sex. We have fought, as women, to control our own educational and vocational options, our own credit cards and bank accounts, to control our own names if we marry, to own and control our own bodies, fer fucksake. I cannot fathom how, after all these years of struggle, we have not made any fucking in-roads that haven't been shut down or detoured by rich, old, white, "Christian" men. Enough is enough. Fuck them. Or don't fuck them. But don't let them fuck you over in this election and for generations to come.

I'm begging you. This is our moment. If all of us who are not cis-normative white males vote for Hillary, we can maybe, just maybe, overthrow the rule of old white men. And wouldn't that be a good thing?

It was a gorgeous dusk in the 772, and promised a gorgeous sunset. The RLA and I took out the old 'vette for a long run down old A-1-A, looking to get a burger and a beer at Harry and the Natives on a Saturday night. We pulled in to a spot in the parking lot and were faced with a TRUMP sign stuck in a planter. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, after all, parking lot/planter... could have been a diner who left it behind. So we trotted in to the hostess, but on the inner doors, in front of her stand, was taped up a Make Amurka Great Again sign.

I just couldn't do it. You wanna support that orange bag of toxic waste vaguely shaped like a human with a frightened ferret on its head, fine. But don't expect me to spend my money in your establishment. I find that Trump sign to be the absolute moral equivalent to flying a Nazi flag or wearing a sheet and pointed hood. Period. End of sentence. I will not support your business as long as you support Donald Trump.

The view of the sunset as we rode home with the top down was spectacular.

How to get an OCD ex-webmaster to volunteer for your organization in one quick lesson. I just hit send.

"Your site is non-functional. I spent the greater part of today resizing my photos and attempting to fill out the application form. I couldn't upload photos and I couldn't submit the form without the photos. I couldn't submit the form because the final field had no indication of the information I was supposed to enter and without that field being filled (try saying that three times), I couldn't submit the form.

The final insult was that this contact address is listed incorrectly on the site. Just FYI, you don't use http as a prefix to an email address, only to an actual web(site) address.

So, for shits and giggles, and because maybe 1) someone actually monitors this account, and 2) maybe this mail account can handle attachments, I'm going to submit the files that I can't submit on the application form I can't submit.

You guys look at the art and figure out if you want me involved in the tour and how to get my money if you do. In the interim, I've spoken to a human (Karen) about being a volunteer and overhauling your website so that it, y'know, actually, like, works."

What to make of Bernie Sanders, the Jew. See, there is this whole thing going on among American Jews... is Bernie Jewish enough? Why doesn't Bernie talk about his Judaism more? I'll tell you why, because he doesn't have to. His Jewishness, to any degree, is the two ton gorilla in the room. Take this political cartoon by Pat Bagley. The whole joke depends on a single premise: that all Christians (even the Pope) are anti-Semitic, is a given. And why shouldn't that be a given? Donald Trump was endorsed by the KKK and the Nation of Islam. The only thing those two groups have in common is a virulent anti-Semitism. (Editing for clarity here, I'm not saying that I believe all Christians are anti-Semites, just that the whole premise of the cartoon depends on that assumption. Which makes the joke not funny, at least to me.)

Just last month, I had a stranger use the phrase "he Jewed me" as she described a business deal that she felt had not been to her advantage. I had just told her my name, and she still used that expression and she was insulted by my response. I didn't slap her, so I don't know what she was so pissed off about. I only called her out on her appalling manners and overt racism.

Is it racism? Because, you know Jews aren't really white. They're...Jews. Don't believe me? Try typing "are Jews" into your Google search engine. Auto-fill suggests the answer: Are Jews White? And how many hits does that get you? A cool 71 million articles. MILLION. And there isn't an easy yes/no answer to be found. Even in Israel, there are questions. Jews: are we a religion? A race?

When you search the Ellis Island data base to find your Jewish ancestors, you have to search for Hebrew. I had this conversation many years ago: Jesus was not a Jew, he was merely of Hebraic extraction. I still don't know what that meant. But back to Bernie.

Try typing Bernie Sanders into your Google search, and the number one result is "Bernie Sanders Jewish". That must be a less pressing issue than are Jews white, because that comes up with a paltry 11 million hits. Predictably, the headlines are "yes, but not enough", or "yes, but too white", or "yes, but he doesn't like to talk about it." Which is also a matter of media spin, because when he does talk about it, nobody seems to listen.

Still, it doesn't matter, because in the American mind, such as it is, Bernie is a Jew, and if there is one thing everyone can agree on, that history has taught us, it's that nobody likes the Jews. Even the delicate dancing around of the problem that Bernie doesn't carry minorities because he's a white male is bullshit. Bernie doesn't carry minorities because he's a Jew and even though Jews were in the forefront of the labor and civil rights movements, when push comes to shove, a white woman is perceived to be a better choice than a Jew of any gender.

As the great Bob Dylan once said, "Who says you can't go home again, of course you can." It's true. I did. What he should have said was that you can't start blogging again once you stop.

R.I.P. David Bowie. When I heard the news, I was instantly transported back to autumn of 1972, when "Changes" played in heavy, yet always welcome, rotation on WVUM, the voice of the University of Miami, and WVUM played in the lobby of my dorm, and I wasn't a lobby rat, but I did spend a number of hours perched in the stairwell, drawing those who were. I met my friend Billy there in the '68 Building. The autumn of 1972 was when I left my home town for good and swore never to return, for reasons that were many and valid.

I've been back in my childhood home for almost a year, so I suppose it is fitting that I was remembering what it was like when I left, and considering "Changes" when I had the following encounter this morning.

A new face is telling me that she is a neighbor, and lives a street over on the river, or near to. I say that's nice. She tells me that the person she bought from was Mitt Romney's wife, Anne's, brother, a Mormon. I say that's nice. She tells me that he is actually a crook. I say that's nice, and not unexpected, really, although I say the latter phrase only in my head, I am sure. Yes, she tells me, he is a crook. When we bought the house, he Jewed us out of $7000 dollars.

Stop, I say. Did you really just say that? Oh yes, she repeats, I did. He Jewed us... Stop, I interrupt. Really? You are using those words? Yes, she tells me with a shrug, I'm from Philadelphia, and... And I'm Jewish, I rudely interrupt again. So, good day to you. And with that, I turned and walked back into my home, and locked the door behind me.

The following is a letter I wrote to Sirius XM and the Underground Garage.

"Last night I was listening to the Underground Garage channel on SiriusXM. It's my favorite. Chris Carter's British Invasion was on and he made some disparaging comments about Barbra Streisand being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He began by saying that the award had been won previously by military men, and that giving it to Ms. Streisand was an insult. While it has been awarded to members of the military, it is primarily a civilian award. Indeed, it is the highest civilian award given by the United States.

From wikipedia: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal, bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award of the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors". The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform.

But that is neither here nor there to my letter. What offended me was not his objection to her being given the medal, but that his dismissal of her was an off-hand misogyny based upon her perceived fuckability or lack thereof. His exact comment was that the only thing she had ever done for freedom was inspire the invention of the burqua. Harsh, and also the sort of insult that I would expect from the likes of Don Imus or Howard Stern, but certainly never by a person broadcasting under the imprimatur of Little Steven. All the more ironic was that it came mere moments after the Coolest Song in the World, "Girl Band" by the Dahlmanns.

Well, this is a free country, you say, and I am free to turn the show off. I did. Then I took the time to write this letter, and to post an essay on my blog about careless misogyny, and to link to it from Facebook. Maybe a dozen people will read it, but that isn't the point, either. The point is that I expect better from the Little Steven brand."

Careless misogyny. The unspoken acceptance that anybody can be reduced in worth to whether or not they inspire desire or mere lust in a viewer. Well, anybody female, that is.

Last week I almost allowed myself to get into an on-line pissing match over "Baby, It's Cold Outside". I referred to it as our collective Christmas rape anthem, and was soundly disabused of that belief by a post-modern feminist who assured me that she is in fact a historian and I am in fact mistakenly reading too much into one line (Hey, what's in this drink). Clearly, she said, the woman is saying no, but she really wants to stay. She is using all sorts of excuses, but they are all based what others might think of her, and not what she herself wants, and so she is using alcohol as an excuse to remain overnight. It's a song about plausible deniability, not about really saying no.

Um, and OK, but in my dottage, I seem to remember that no means no, and it doesn't matter what reason one gives for saying it. If you say no -- to anything-- does that mean that any person who thinks you should say yes is more in tune with your mind and can force you to, say, take cream in your tea? Or maybe you would like to have a little white sugar in your coffee. Is it the right of someone else to tell you that you really don't want that? And to prevent you by force, if need be, from getting it?

Is it not the same thing? Self-determination is self-determination. I chose not to continue the fight with my feminist historian because a stupid song is not worth getting exercised over. But I see a thread here, and I have to tug at it. It's OK to dismiss someone for not being pretty. It's OK to sing a song about forcing someone to stay the night because the imaginary girl really wants it. It's OK to shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic because those people shouldn't be there, shouldn't be pregnant, shouldn't be poor, shouldn't be doing something a white man with a gun thinks they shouldn't be doing.

What was it someone said: evil is not just the actions of the few, but the silence of the many.

If, as they say in most every mystic tradition, being the seventh son of a seventh son is a big deal, then what is there to say about me? I am the only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter. Our line ends here. Is there nothing mystically inherent in that?

One of my cousins asked me...well, actually, she asked me many questions and among them were these: Why are we still in communication with each other when there is enough of an age difference that we don't know each other very well? She was grown and out of the house by the time I was aware of her, but I adored her mother, who was my great-aunt. My mother adored both of them. So why wouldn't I want to be in touch with her? She is a link in a very tiny chain. Which brought the next question: Why am I so obsessed with finding Lillian Rube and the rest of my long-lost family?

That I cannot answer. I can only say that I am called to her. Or she calls to me. I have her face. I took care of her child, my mother, at the end of her life when she was little more than the infant Lillian left behind ninety-odd years before. I have a piece of her handwork, an embroidered sampler which reads "The Last Rose of Summer." It was unfinished at the time of her death and is unfinished still, almost 100 years later. I can't finish it. I have considered framing it, but who would care about it after I am gone?

My mother was the only daughter of her mother, indeed, the only child. Her mother was the only child (I think) of her father, but one of many sisters born to the same mother. So there I am: the only daughter of the only daughter of the only daughter. Who were these women? Are they the reason I work with my hands? Are they why I cook? Do I have their hands, their hips, their impossibly curly hair? Who were their mothers? Why is it so hard to trace the matrilineal line in genealogy?

1. It's been so long since I wrote code (and enjoyed it) that I have done everything in my power today to avoid sitting down and banging out code. Which is exactly the task I have set myself for this week. Because I need to create a new web site. For the new brand. Which brings me to point

2. Tante Leah's Handmades started with custom tallit, and I love making them, but a line of bespoke prayer shawls is not going to be my golden ticket to fame and fortune...or even a brass ticket to 15 minutes and a buck two eighty...unless Bernie wins the White House and I can somehow finagle my way into becoming the official Tallis Maker to the POTUS...which would be a first for sure and thereby ensure fame..but that is never gonna happen, so I need to broaden my market. Which leads us to

Plan B
Plan B is this. Tante Leah's Handmades is dead. Long live Ma Groover's Artisan and Vintage Goods. Except that can't happen until I hit publish on the new Ma Groover site. And THAT can't happen until I sit my ass in this chair, chain myself to the fucking keyboard and painfully write enough code to launch a new Expression Engine site. Expression Engine: The choice of geeks everywhere who are too cool to use a simple program like GoLive or DreamWeaver or WordPress. Expression Engine, where there are no templates or plug and play options. Expression Engine, the impossibly undocumented bad boy to which I hitched my code-writing wagon and I am so long out of the day to day of web work that this hurts me.

Here's the thing: I never really watched Mad Men. I kept up with it by reading many and various recaps: Tom and Lorenzo, of course, but also recaps that came from advertising that reality checked the ad references, and others that reality checked the cultural touch stones. The reason I didn't really watch (aside from not having pay tv) was that they lost me in the first season, when there was a casual reference to Jews in Boca Raton. It was 1960, and trust this native Floridian Jew, there wouldn't have been any. They were in West Palm Beach and in Miami. The rich WASPS depicted as vacationing there would have been on Miami Beach or in Palm Beach, or even gambling in Havana. They were not visiting Boca. So I observed Mad Men from a distance.

Now that it has ended, and the ur-feminist story arc has been picked apart, I find that this has made me uncomfortable in many ways. The loudest voice in my head is that the sexist behavior depicted on the show still exists, that the fights about equal wages, access to health care, self-government of the female body.... those are all on the news every night. Every day in Washington, and in state capitols around the United States, women are getting the rights that were won in my lifetime taken away again.

Some of these recaps I read talk about Sally Draper, and what she might have become. Personally, I thought that she would become this girl. Or maybe this one. Then I realized that I am the same age as the fictional Sally, so why not look at what happened to me? In 1971, even though I was (arguably) the smartest kid in the Marine Science class in my high school (this was long before magnet schools, before AP classes, before multiple tries at the SAT), my science teacher told me that I could never do research, only teach because I was a girl. I quit science on the spot and became an art student, because nobody there told me I couldn't be an artist.

No, that happened in college. At the University of Miami, where it was de rigeur for the (male) chairpersons to sleep with the female graduate students (sometimes they even married them), it was a given that females artists would always be conflicted between creating and procreating. Even my choice of graphic design rather than painting as a major was derided: I'd make money, but not art. Yeah, fuck them. I did make money.

Once I was out of school, I moved to New York City. I arrived on the Chinese New Year, 1976. I got a job at a post-production company that had three partners, one of whom was a woman. I had to join the Animators Union, and this prompted a conversation about how many women were in the union. Would I be the first? No, but you could count them on one hand. My boss's name was Jean (not Joan) and she had a chatelaine, not a pen on a chain around her neck. The other two partners were men. One of them hit on me constantly. He'd ask me out. He would ask how old the oldest man I'd ever dated was. He would leer at me and tell me he had a son my age and wouldn't it be something if I started dating him (not the son, you understand). He would not leave me alone. One morning, I was nursing a hangover and running late. He and I were the only two in the elevator. He hit on me again. I said "Steve, if you are so hot for some young ass, go fuck your son and leave me alone." Yeah, I know. That was pretty rough. The only reason I wasn't fired was Jean. She told me that Steve was not going to be allowed to harass me, but that if I ever said another word to him, I was gone.

Eventually, I left New York and went back to Miami. In 1988, I went back to the University of Miami for a master's degree. I got thrown out for telling one professor that he was full of shit for saying that as a woman, I could never be a real artist, since I would always be conflicted between creating and procreating and for telling another that my private life was none of his fucking business, that my husband was not paying for my tuition and it wasn't up to my parents to do so either. During the subsequent divorce, in 1991, that same husband was allowed to cancel my credit cards because he was my husband. Without my knowledge or permission, and they were in my name. He wasn't even associated with the accounts. By the same token, I couldn't get insurance for my car without putting him on my policy because the state did not recognize separation as a legal state. I was married, and he had to be on my insurance.

In 1992, in Clovis, New Mexico, I was told variously that people didn't "like your type" (depending on who said it, my type was either an aggressive —read intelligent— woman or a Yankee) and that women didn't belong in the work place. I also had someone ask me to my face if mine was "a Jew name"? In 2008, I was threatened with firing because I was knitting in a meeting, keeping my hands busy and my mind focused. What I learned from that is that doodling, texting, surfing Facebook on one's phone are all acceptable ways of attending a meeting, but that "women's work" is not.

And here it is 2015. The color-blind golden future that enabled Barrack Obama to be elected president is the same one that greeted his entry onto social media with "Hello Nigger". Oh, yeah. America is a color blind country all right. This is what Sally Draper would have faced, people. More of the same stupid shit she grew up with, and I suspect that like me, Sally Draper would be looking at an America where we are still fighting anti-semitism, anti-feminism, gender discrimination, women's rights to self-determination, equal pay and oh,fuck, just the basic right to exist as a woman who can wear what ever the fuck she wants in public with a reasonable expectation of being able to walk down the street safe from rape and verbal harassment and she would be saying "What the ever loving fuck? Didn't we take care of that shit in the 70s?"

Which begs this next question: How is it even possible for that mindset to still exist? Who are the people perpetuating the same old thing? The average age of a Tea Party Republican congressman, is 50-60 years old. That means Sally's brothers and friends: Gene, Bobby and Glen. Except clearly not Glen, because he served (and presumably died) in Viet Nam. Worse, people like Paul Ryan are almost young enough to be our children, so where did my generation go so very, very wrong?

Well, happy birthday, Bob Dylan. Once again, the invitation to dinner at my house has been ignored. I understand, I really do. One can only assume you are at your mom's house, where she has made your favorite rice pudding (baked, not creamy, and studded with golden raisins and a crust of cinnamon sugar). In fact, The Star of As The Yacht Comes About called me today to commiserate over this annual no-show of yours. She assumes that you are in a rumpled linen shirt, wearing a Panama hat under the tiki hut on the beach behind Sir Richard Branson's home on his island in the Caribbean.

That was when we realized what type of holy day this is in the Church of Rock and Roll. Where Festivus has an annual airing of grievances and feats of strength, and other church days require penance or reflection, this is the day we must air our assumptions. After all, we all know that when one assumes, one makes an ass of you and me. And who in the C of R&R has had more assumptions made on his behalf, than The Bob? Clearly, this is the day we must let someone know what we assume of them.

I just did that: I blurted out to her how painful watching one particular episode of Grace and Frankie was for me and I hoped she could forgive me. I could hear her eyes goggle over the phone. Not a clue as to what incident I referred. Thank Bob. But I did make an ass of myself doing it. It was a perfect celebration of the Feast of Bob. Now go forth and assume: What do you assume Bob Dylan does on his birthday?