CALM A LA IS COMING TO PITTSFIELD where I delivered two of my three children

I promised myself while meditating for a long time this morning that I would not post on Substack today. It’s been a wild and crazy exciting week but hey, writing these columns can be a bit draining. So enough writing for now, except

exactly 25 minutes ago, my darling Denver daughter Lindsay (who THIS VERY Saturday afternoon is flying from Colorado into Albany Airport with MOO, our soon-to-be 20 month old grandson MONTE, Italian for mountains)

Lindsay texted me this

OH MY GOD, how can it be happening, CALM a la is coming to our sweet little Berkshire town of PITTSFIELD, population about 50,000 where many of my family members lived for a long time. And with her for this major big donor event is Yo Yo Ma, Emmanuel AX, and James Taylor (our hometown Tanglewood boy.)

And now I’m laughing really really hard because i actually ACTUALLY

i actually thought that maybe we could all — Rich, me, Lindsay and MOO (20 months old this week) — pile in the car, strap little Moo into the carseat we borrowed from my other BOSTON daughter, Jocelyn. Then we would drive (casually) about 45 minutes north on the mostly vacant back roads, through the most beautiful, lush green canopy of mostly maple trees in the green green Berkshires. We would leave a little extra time because there would likely to be a bit more traffic than usual because CALM a LA is coming.

Finally we would pull up to the venue for CALM a La’s donor event, which she had committed to before President Biden announced his decision to abandon the race last Sunday. Wait, it hasn’t even a been week or has it? No, it’s only three days, what has happened to time?)

Anyway, enough fantasizing. The tickets were sold out (most of them anyway) LAST WEEKEND (even before she became so so famous as she is NOW!)

Oh, except maybe, just maybe, if you had/have the good fortune to be a REALLY BIG DONOR then just possibly you could grab a ticket, or maybe few of them for your family, for only

$12,500 a piece

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

Ok. So now I am as Calm as I was when I got up off my meditation bench. Sort of. Writing (which I love almost as much as breathing) does get my blood pumping. (It also puts me in a timeless zone, you know that zone if you write or paint or garden or do yoga or staring into the sky, or as my friend Cathie says, “creating harmony,” anything you do really really really slowly and mindfully.)

Do you realize what a momentous time in history we are living in? My Aunt Bette, who lives on a beautiful lake in Hudson, Illinois, she turned 90 on May 7th, she reads the New York Times every day, Aunt Bette — who is reading my fifth novel about her grandmother, my great great grandmother Filomena Scrivano, who had a baby out of

WEDLOCK godalmighty I detest that word! More on that another time.

Aunt Bette texted me this morning to say that this is “such a topsy-turvey political time.” That’s for sure.

Oh my, what would it be like to be a reporter covering this historic/herstoric event? You see even though I haven’t been a writing-on-deadline kind of reporter like I was in Chicago and New York in my twenties and early 30s — right up until I had my first baby, when I took her in a stroller…

I’m getting ahead of myself which always happens when I start tap tap tapping the laptop keys — my fingers know exactly how it feels to beat the keyboard.

I would just love love love to be able to be able to write a newspaper feature story for The Berkshire Eagle or any other newspaper or even this blog. But of course I can’t go.

Years ago I wrote many many many stories, mostly features, for The Berkshire Eagle, a fabulous small city newspaper. Writing as a freelance journalist after I quit The Wall Street Journal (six months after my first born, Jocelyn, was born in 1984)

— fool that I was I actually put tiny Jocelyn with the giant black olive eyes and her newfangled blue stroller into the back of our car and drove us across the George Washington bridge and then parked in frantic Wall Street. We strolled casually (because I was still in the mother-smitten first year after a baby arrives). I wheeled the stroller and itty bitty Jossy into the office of my rather uptight female editor and I asked her point blank, very nicely of course, if I could work part-time covering AT&T or whatever, because I was nursing anddddddddddd hhahahahaha

did I actually think that she oh she was a piece of work was her whole entire life.

OMG what a LAUGH! She looked me straight in the eye and kind of smiling that steely grin of hers, she said, “Claudia, you want everything, and you know what, you’re not gonna get it!”

OKKKKKKKKK OK KAMALA

so so sorry I asked you miss prissy editor HAHAHAHAHAHA so I traded it in, I bagged it, I drove Jossy and me straight to Toys R Us (which had been one of the companies I covered for the WSJ while doing the “retail” beat.) I bought her some blocks, or a doll. Something fun.

OK, all that WSJ stuff happened back in 1985 and here we are almost 40 years later and it looks like a woman, a Black woman, will/might/should/could indeed get EVERYTHING!!!! Oh but gee NOW my college roomate Cathie M just just now texted me this hysterical tidbit:

“MAGA: KAMALA HARRIS never BIRTHED ANY CHILDREN!

“ME: JUST LIKE THE 46 PRESIDENTS BEFORE HER!”

Mille grazie Cathie! :)

Those MAGA folks are going to pull out the stops trying to stop Kamala! But guess what? We women/men united behind Kamala CALMly will fight back with words

and yes I know the jokes about CALM A la’s word salad but I happen to love salad LOL

As I am busy busy trying to wrap this blogbaby up, my husband is actually singing this jingle in the kitchen: “We’ve come a long way, Baby, to get where you are today.” If you are old enough, you will know that this is the jingle for the Virginia Slims commericial back when??? who knows!

He continues singing while making his coffee: “…you’ve got your own cigarette now baby, you have come a long long way!” My husband is a virtual jokester, and the most amazing juke boxer — he rings out with jingles and all kinds of old old songs.

He is actually singing the stupid jingle NOW.

Wait. NOW….how could I forget: the National Organization for Women how did that pop into my mind.

Anyway I wasn’t really sad at all to leave the WSJ in Manhattan. I had a long commute via PATH into the World Trade Center from our tiny home in Ridgewood, New Jersey where by some weird quirk many senior WSJ editors lived!

After I quit the WSJ, Rich and I took a big breath in and moved to rural Columbia County, New York, which is just across the state line from where we retired to, the Berkshires. In Columbia County, New York, we lived in the sweetest old farmhouse for more than 30 years— my oh my oh my heavens, how time doth fly. And as Einstein maintained maybe there is no past or future only NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

Albert Einstein famously wrote to a friend and here is the quote "the past, present and future are only illusions, even if stubborn ones". This conclusion came from his special theory of relativity, which states that simultaneity is relative and that there is no absolute significance to the present moment. For example, two events that happen at the same time from one reference frame may happen at different times from another. Einstein also …..

YAWN…if you have not gone completely CALMpletely to sleep

I wrote for newspapers and magazines, including PARENTS. In one article, “Kids Sharing Rooms,” the magazine actually sent a photo team up from New York, they even brought my darling daughters these outfits.

Hey you must be ABSOLUTELY bored out of your gourd reading about me so let’s get back to the topic at hand. CALM a la is coming to Pittsfield and hey, it would be really fun to be there, as a reporter or just a person, a woman person, me

It would/will be/NOW NOW NOW NOW SOON

IT WILL BE HISTORIC I’m telling you that

“CALM a la is a PHENOMENA”

OMG THAT’S ANOTHER BUMPER STICKER…I have to tell Alice out in Denver because she seems to think we can make these bumper stickers into MEMES (whatever that means) and they could GO VIRAL…oh boy…oh girl IF YOU SEE A BUMPER STICKER THAT READS: CALM A LA IS A PHENOMENA

then you read it here first! Oh, and if you should donate to this column (I have two paid subscribers: ALICE from Denver back in January and this morning, REBEKAH from my temple, Hevreh of Southern Berkshire where I am headed shortly for LUNCHANDLEARN with Rabbi Jodie

One thing that for me is important to keep in mind: Kamala was NOT a dream candidate oh like Barack or Bill Clinton or.

She was not the candidate I cottoned to. She is not the one I would have picked, because I was just kind of so so, not even lukewarm on her during the debates of

But. HEY…She has been selected, by, well, NOW that depends on your cosmology. Because she is clearly riding a current of OUTER SPACE feminist energy

NOW NOW NOW NOW NOWNOW

and wouldn’t it JUST be mind-blowing to be there, in Pittsfield on Sunday stop Claudia time to go to temple…

I was going to say it would be kind of like what it was (sort of) to go to

Woodstock, yes, I said it, Woodstock, where there is now a historic sign!

No I didn’t go. There was a guy from high school who invited me to go but I cannot for the life me even remember his name OR why I didn’t go — probably because my dad said no Claudia! :)

OFF TRACK.

BACK back back to Calm a la, she is a history-maker, her CALMpaign is HERSTORY is so so unlikely —- actually the truth be told only a few few days ago I went to YOUTUBE and watched a rally she was at (this was Saturday before BIDEN stepped down.) She was honestly a bit wobbly kind of like a tender little bird leaving the nest

But now NOW that she is already all ready LAUNCHED HEADED FOR THE MOON

soon she will be becoming a HERSTORY a maker of her story. And OURS. All of ours.

She has already made history as the first Black Vice President of these United States. But hey, becoming THE FIRST BLACK FEMALE President OF THESE UNITED STATES??????

UNITING THESE STATES????? Under the first Black female or first female Black PRESIDENT KAMALA…get used to saying it…PRESIDENT KAMALA..

NOW that would be other worldly, astronomical, as in Einsteinian, E=MC2 cosmology

that would/will be/was

a different matter ALL TOGETHER