Only for my annual skin cancer checkup, and even then, no cameras. 

I can’t see any advantage to anyone in my posing nude, so while I could not rule it out absolutely, I just don’t see it.  Leonard Nimoy did do an intriguing photography book on large gorgeous women a few years back that a friend of mine told me was quite interesting.  I haven’t seen it, just reporting.  Still, I think I am shy enough around cameras that this is unlikely to happen.  

All right.  If you have no idea what is happening over there, you have no business concluding that the facebook group is anti-wowowow in any way.  Maybe you are just indulging in that old-fashioned American exercise of jumping to conclusions…

 [Myself, I prefer to hike the Bay Trail.  I recommend it to you.]

Oh really, Bonnie, now you are just getting paranoid.  If people want to make friends online, it is hardly recruiting!  Make your own facebook site and see if you like it.  Or better yet, get outside and enjoy people in 3-D, with all their possible political philosophies, quirks and charms. 

Certainly what Mugsy may do on other sites has nothing to do with you.  If you think it does, you may need to read up on narcissism.  

Some killings are intended to send a message to others as well as to end a specific life.  It is a message of terror.  That is why there are special statutes for hate crimes that are different from murder statutes. 

What people are overlooking, in all this talk of bipartisanship, is that there is a great variety of viewpoints within the Democratic party.  In fact, the way that the Congress was won, in part due to Raum Emanuel’s leadership, was to look in Republican districts for Democrats who were conservative enough to win in those districts.  It is a big tent philosophy. 

If the Republican party wants to go curl up and die in a purity purge of their party, purging everyone who is not antiabortion, neocon, fiscally irresponsible and disrespectful of the Constitution, I say it is a good thing.  

 There is a reason this nation elected a President who got his feet wet teaching Constitutional law.  We saw the harm caused by a President who routinely disregarded the Constitution.  

As for Arlen Specter, he has always represented Pennsyvlania, and so he has always been independent.  Whether he is a RINO or a DINO, it doesn’t matter.  He represents his state.  

There are more than two parties anyway.  We have actual independents in Congress, and there are Greens and Peace and Freedom and other parties across the country.  

The only reality tv I watch is C-SPAN.  I am not as ruthlessly competitive as I used to be anyway, so it is just as well.  I have trouble imagining myself on C-SPAN but I sure do learn a lot from it.

I think it is bizarre how we treat cancer survivors in this country.  Lots of surface sympathy, but then try to get health insurance afterward.  A member of my family lost his health insurance after his cancer diagnosis.  He could not afford the expensive annual checkups to make sure it was not coming back.  He died because he did not live in Canada.  Even the assigned risk pool in California has been not taking applicants in a long time, and if you do get in, the cost is very high. 

We need a better system of health care.  I don’t think the private market health insurance companies have been doing a good job.  I think a public option has to be included in any legislation to set up universal health care.  Some of the features that have been built into health insurance plans in the last twenty years make no sense.  Deductibles and co-pays discourage people from getting screened for things that are cheaper and easier to treat when caught early.  Some insurance plans refuse people for things as easily treatable as high cholesterol.   It is bizarre to live in the nation that spends more per capita on health care than any other nation and yet see so many people dying from lack of access to appropriate health care.  And don’t get me started on the infant mortality rate.  How can we do that to babies!?

Everything has changed.  Businesses no longer consider it a stigma to lay off large numbers of workers.  Banks no longer consider it a stigma to charge exhorbitant amounts of interest.  Some are practically loan sharks—have you looked into how much people are charged at those "check-cashing" joints?  Sadly, the banks have more clout in Congress than the average Joe or Jane, and so they got a bankruptcy bill a few years back that favors the banks over the citizen-victim. 

Bankruptcy is the state of having insufficient resources to pay one’s debts.  Declaring bankruptcy is the legal procedure.  Many people are bankrupt and never go to court to declare it.  Most people are just an accident or illness away from bankruptcy.  Even people with health insurance sometimes discover that their insurance does not cover the very procedures needed to save their lives.  

Years ago I used to do bankruptcies for people.  The people were always surprised.   They had had good jobs and then they lost them and then they couldn’t get new jobs soon enough to keep the bank for sending foreclosure notices.   They were going fine until the truck hit them and they landed in the hospital with fifteen broken bones.   Sometimes I had to explain to them that bankruptcy is in the Bible, that bankruptcy was designed to save people like them.  Back then I understood that bankruptcy had a stigma, but there is little distance between the state of being bankrupt and the state of declaring bankruptcy and getting the voracious creditors off your back.  Still, some people declare bankruptcy too early; timing is everything when it comes to actually going to court.

We have been through a decade where every third corporation, and certainly most retailers, have been through a bankruptcy.  When Macy’s goes to the bankruptcy court for protection,  as they did several years ago, the stigma begins to fade. 

Happy Birthday Ms. Bergen!  You are always such a joy to behold, whether it is your acting, your photography, your participation in wowowow or anything else you take on.  [Your memoir was also wonderful.]  I hope you noticed that they decided to have the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner tonight.   I think Murphy would have loved that.  

The headline is wrong.  Brooke Astor was not on trial; her alleged tormentors are on trial. 

And yet the Republican platform persists in containing anti-choice provisions, even in the most recent version supporting a Constitutional amendment that would state that an unborn child has a right to life that cannot be infringed.  [This would eradicate the protections of Roe v. Wade.]  See http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/Values.htm  It does not surprise me that most women would lack faith in a party that seems to lack faith in most women.  Sure there may be individual Republicans who believe otherwise.  But the party platform has a lot of junk in it. 

A dear friend took me to eat at Melisse in Santa Monica last year and it was just spectacular.  From the amuse bouche of a deep fried olive stuffed with something delectable to the lobster foam to the lamb three ways and some insane chocolate concoction for dessert, each course was artful and delectable.  Of course no meal is truly enjoyable without good company and good surroundings, and these were both in abundance.  The chef came to the table to be sure we were happy and I believe I gushed. 

Later I found out that the place had Michelin stars and was thought by some to be the best restaurant in L.A.  I don’t know; I haven’t eaten in every restaurant in L.A.  I just know that this was a wonderful meal, a great experience.  

The meals everyone is describing sound wonderful.  I do think that food tastes better when shared with someone you love.

I have dusted off my white prom gloves and am thinking I may start wearing them again.  There is a reason that gloves were popular in the nineteenth century. 

 But we all need to do our part to prop up our own immunity by getting enough sunlight every day, enough foods with zinc and vitamin C in them and otherwise getting enough sleep.  Most of the people that get really sick with flu are those whose immune systems are out of sorts.  

I so look forward to gobbling up Ruth Reichl’s new book, just as I have all her previous books, and long before that, the lunches that she prepared at the Swallow in Berkeley. 

I am glad she will be in Berkeley for Mother’s Day.   I did notice that her luncheon the day before at Bookpassage is sold out.   Not surprising; she has a lot of pals in the Bay Area as well as a lot of admirers.  

Thanks for a wonderful interview, Julia!

What a way to make a living!