Does every powerful man cheat?

It might seem that way, what with Gov. Sanford, Sen. Ensign, and so on and so on — and that’s just looking back over the last month and narrowing our focus to politicians.

Here in Hartford, a settlement was just reached in a messy and expensive divorce of a businessman and a countess that included allegations of infidelity.

Yes, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to make it to heaven, but after a while, you might start to look at powerful men funny. Don’t they know better? Do powerful women cheat, as well? (Or are powerful women just better at keeping their indiscretions out of the news?) Is any one out there dancing with the one what brung ‘em?

What if you could live forever?

Or, in the absence of that, what if you could live to be 100?

It says here that more people are doing that. Note this:

In the U.S., centenarians are expected to increase from 75,000 to more than 600,000 by midcentury. Those primarily are baby boomers hitting the 100-year mark. Their population growth could add to rising government costs for the strained Medicare and Social Security programs.

Yep. That would be me. I’ll be 100 in 2059, and I will be the drain on your system. Whee!

‘Twas

I don’t remember a book that moved me as much as did Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes.” Though the poverty was unrelenting and the characters as immovable as stone, there was lyricism and grace in every sentence, and on that last word, “‘Tis,” I closed the book softly, only to open it up and start again.

How many books make you do that, want to drink in again the story that is both foreign and familiar.

So I’m sorry to see that McCourt has died, at age 78. The LA Times called him a late-bloomer, but I don’t think so. Instead, I think he sat down and wrote his story when he was damn good and ready. And we are all the better for it.

What’s the last name someone’s called you, other than your own?

I recently received an e-mail from someone who said his name was Greg, and who said he thought I was “a typical radical lesbian.”

I, of course, shot back e-mail asking him to define “typical.”

In fact, I’m not a lesbian — though if I was, I believe God would love me anyway. And I’m not a radical, because I know radicals and I wouldn’t make the cut even at my wildest.

But dang. “Typical?” Now that pissed me off.

Because of the way I perform at my day job at America’s-oldest-continuously-published-newspaper, I get called names sometimes — though the vast majority of my correspondence is thoughtful and deep, and sometimes both. I hear from people who agree and disagree with what I’ve written, but there are those few who react the way you would on a school playground, if there were no teachers standing by. I don’t think they’ve ever really gotten to me — few if any sign their names, and I believe they’re just letting off steam in a not terribly creative way — but I’ve been called, in addition to radical and typical and lesbian:

Old (guilty)

Ugly (don’t care about that one either way)

Fat (I’m not, but O.K.)

Stupid (I’m not that, either)

and

a typical New Englander (Ha and ha again; I’m a hillbilly from Missouri. Please try again.).

At its core, name-calling among adults reveals a helpless feeling on the part of the name-caller. And much as I want to shout back (and oh! I do so want to do that), it lessens their power even more to answer with a quip. My husband asks me why I even bother. He thinks I’m out there trying to make new friends. In fact, I’m being a pill and loving every minute of it.

The weird thing is, on some of these exchanges — and they might go a whole day — we’ve often signed off from one another not friends, really, but certainly not enemies. So it’s all good. I’m winning snarky people over, one snark at a time.

Are you fat?

And if you are, do you fly?

This is interesting to me, because 1. this is another world and it’s not something I think about and 2. I believes this is something no one should have to think about it. I understand that airline companies are about making a profit, and the smaller the seat, the more people they can stuff into an airplane, and thus, the larger the profit.

Would that we were all Size 2.

And I wasn’t even an economics major.

But I also know that one size doesn’t fit all — unless, of course you have the scratch the spring for some Spanx, which I had to look up because I’ve heard of them but wasn’t familiar as I grew up post-girdle-generation.

It makes me sad that size-ism seems to be the last acceptable -ism. We can make fat jokes, we can look disdainfully at large people as they pass by, and somehow? That’s still O.K.

Only it’s not.

Are pregnancies fair to all concerned when the woman’s over 50?

That’s the question posed here, on CNN.

I’m 50 in a little less than two weeks, and I can tell you I have no desire or intent of getting pregnant again. My health is good, I make a decent living, but my energies are directed somewhere other than child-rearing.

This says it’s nobody’s business, and if pressed, I’d have to say I agree. But the one quibble I have is — forgive me — What About The Babeeez? Is it fair to launch a life when you haven’t a hope of being around for much of it? Or is that the wrong question to ask? Some of this is colored by my decision not to have children as I’ve gotten older, I admit that.

But then, that’s my choice, and I’m heartily uncomfortable with dicating a woman’s reproductive decisions. You?

I think I’ve become too world-weary…

…when my reaction to the world’s largest cupcake is “That’s it? That’s all the bigger it is?”

Say you attended your own funeral…

…Embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he feels he has done so in a Sunday opinion piece in which he starts by saying he should probably call or write everyone to say he’s sorry:

I have struggled with how best to convey my regret in letting so many down, and in that regard I realize this op-ed does not do justice to the process of saying “I am sorry.” A handwritten note or phone call would ultimately be more appropriate, but given the number of people I need to apologize to I write this to begin the journey of trying to get things more right with you and others.

And I started to think this would be another long and odd and rambling apology similar to the one he issued back in June when he first announced his infidelity. But then he mentions a sandwich shop worker and seventh-grade colleagues who’ve contacted him since his announcement of his extramarital affair, so maybe everyone’s saving him the trouble of all those handwritten notes to his constituents by contacting him first.

And then he delivers a sermon, mostly, about grace and humility and thankfulness and forgiveness.

He doesn’t mention leaving office, though that rumor persists. Sanford has, however, talked about his love of the woman-not-his-wife, and how he would try to fall back in love with his wife, to which his wife might be inclined to say, “Mr. Frying Pan, meet the Governor.”

(Of course I’m not encouraging that, but she could be excused if she felt that way. We’re not all Gandhi. More than the extended public apologies, more than the details about his cheating, what I’ve most wanted to see was some press spokesperson unplugging his microphone, as throughout this ordeal Sanford has appeared both chastened and – well — hapless. I want a politician who’s holding it together, as I’ve come to expect politicians to do, even though I know that’s not fair of me.) 

(Here’s a photo of one gentleman — who’s now leaving — evidently trying to step in and make me less uncomfortable, bless him.)

Sanford’s right: We’ve all sinned. If forgiveness is ours to give — and I’m not sure those of us outside the state have a dog in the show — I hereby grant it and encourage all of us to move on.

And just for the record? At my own funeral, I hope there’s lots of rousing music and scant little attention paid to my crimes and misdemeanors. Thank you.

Is health care a right? Or a privilege?

Despite our economic downturn, 13 states say it’s a right.

You can get in a shouting match over this, but there are ways to make health care accessible and affordable to all. I wish my own state, whose capital was once called the Insurance Capital of the World, would follow suit.

Hey! Roaches love bread and beer

And who doesn’t?

How do you kill a cockroach kindly? Or, at least, remove it from your domicile? Umbra knows.