Meet the Press won’t be the same without him, but I’m really going to miss him in November. I was counting on him to give us his point of view on the election as the results came in.

How can we judge these women for getting hymen restoration when girls in their teens in this country are getting new noses and/or biggerbreasts?

OMG, Liza, I thought you wrote “switch panties” and I just about fell out of my chair. I guess I need to have my glasses checked. BTW, I wish you luck on your quest to stop smoking.

Welcome to Cynthia - I look forward to your contributions. The new site looks good, but what really impressed me was how fast the web wizards responded to previous comments re: font size, reply button, first and last buttons, top of the page. Thank for you all that! I would like to see our names at the top of a comment - I admit that there are some posters that I scroll through without reading. It’s a medical necessity - my blood pressure is borderline. LOL

Dona, I agree with you 100%. I’m heartbroken that she didn’t win the nomination, but I know that she will find some other way to contribute. I think the role of Vice President would be a waste of her talents, but if that’s what she wants, I’ll vote for it.

Since I retired, my cat and I are in a constant battle to see who is boss. I think he’s winning.

I can’t forget the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy. I was living in San Francisco at the time and RFK came through on a campaign stop - I think it was only a few days before he was murdered. I was standing on the street and he reached down and shook my hand. I was amazed because he looked so tired and worn out, but his hand shake was one of the strongest I’ve ever felt. I had such faith in him - he wanted so badly to do the right thing in life and I was so sure he would get the chance. I was devastated when he was killed. My friends and I cried for days, we all felt so helpless. For people that were too young to know what it felt like, it felt like 9/11 felt. Like the world didn’t make sense anymore. Like no one was safe. We learned to live with our grief, but we won’t forget.

Add Allison Kraus and I’ll do the driving - I don’t care what they charge for gas! I’m so pleased to “meet” another Iris DeMent fan. PS I left home in 1967 and moved to Haight Ashbury. Groovy! LOL

This weekend I’m going to lie around with the book “Girls Like Us” by Sheila Weller. The story of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. These ladies wrote songs which defined my life in the sixties and early seventies. Reading their stories is like hanging out with old friends.

I’d go back to the Sixties in San Francisco - I went to the Fillmore Auditorium every Thursday night and I saw some wonderful shows. Local bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother (before and after Janis Joplin), Jefferson Airplane and all the great bands who came to town like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Doors, Cream, Eric Clapton, Buffaloe Springfield - too many to list. It was a wonderful time to be young - now that I’m old(er), I’d love to hear that magic again.

Josie, I love your artwork. Thanks for sharing with us.

I was raised Catholic, but my sister, brother and I would often “cut” mass. My mother would drop us off in front of the church (she stopped going when she married my Dad - a non-Catholic) and we would run to the lake the minute she turned the corner. Even though there were a couple of times when we barely made it back in time for her to pick us up, she never caught on. I attended Saturday classes at the Notre Dame school because we couldn’t afford to go full time. The priest and nuns treated us like we were inferior to the full-time students. When I was fifteen the nun teaching confirmation classes called me the daughter of satan and kicked me out of the class for asking too many questions. I never went back to church, but sometimes I miss it. I don’t miss the religious part, but I miss the ritual and the beauty of the artwork. These days I speak to the Holy Spirit directly - I don’t need or want some priest to interpret for me. I still make the sign of the cross, but I think I do that more to honor the memory of my grandmother than for any religious reason. A cookie dough church sounds good to me!

Now I’m looking at the graphics for this site and thinking - could that be blood red???? I knew there was a reason I liked those pictures.

I used to think about a boyfriend from high school. I chose to marry someone else who I divorced after he developed a love affair with drugs. I often wondered what my life would have been like with the first boy. Then I had a strange dream where I married the first boy and moved to Texas with him, only to find out it was a mistake and i left Texas on a bus for San Francisco. I woke up feeling amazed and relieved - my dream told me that I would have ended up single in San Francisco anyway, so I’ve never given him another thought. I’m much happier without either one of them.

Linda, I think you’re probably right about most Americans knowing more about Oprah that any world leaders (male or female, past or present). I like Oprah but her influence scares me because some people seem willing to follow her blindly. As for me, I’m inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt and Golda Meir. A