Toronto (January 31, 2008) -- This morning's Toronto Sun has a full page photo of a beautiful, mixed-race 8 month old baby girl and the caption "Who Left This Baby Girl To Freeze?"  Yesterday this sweet baby was abandoned in the stairwell of a parking garage; security video shows a man leaving her face down about 2 hours before she was found in subzero temperatures -- by a woman who mistook her for a doll until she whimpered.  Today the hunt is on to find out where this baby came from and who the man was who dumped her in a place where, it is clear, he was more concerned that perhaps he would not be seen, than that she would be found.

And as you might expect, the telephone lines are lighting up with hundreds of calls from people who want this little girl.  You might also expect, and be right, that the majority of these calls are coming from pro-life Christians, the same people who would have been at the door of the mother of this baby (who will probably turn out to be a teenager) with aid, comfort, advice and care if only, like her baby girl, she had whimpered.

My guess, from long, sad experience, is that the man who dumped this baby will prove to be the "babydaddy", an older guy who persuaded the teenaged mother of his child that unless she got rid of the brat, he would leave her, and because YouHaveToHaveAManOrYouWill Die, he talked her into letting him dispose of the inconvenience somewhere that wouldn't be tracked back to her.

And equally sad is the thought that, if they do identify the mother, they will make every effort to slam this baby back at her and congratulate themselves on "reuniting a Family."  The next time the babydaddy will make sure the baby never boomerangs back to them...with her death.

In a culture that urges girls to believe that they have to have sex every day or they'll die, that they are nothing without a man, and that babies are merely an inconvenient byproduct that is bound to ruin their lives, most babies like this one don't even live to see the light of their first day.  But of those who do, I fear that the ones who are inspired by movies like "Juno" to believe that having a baby and handing it off to someone else is Cool, and then find out after they have the baby that it's not that easy and not Cool at all, will more and more often resort to simply dumping their little anchor anywhere so they can be Free...and doing it at the urging of the man who sees his child as only an impediment, a garnishment on his salary and a competitor with the babymama who wants to be fed, changed and cared for when he wants instant sex.

There has to be another answer.  Can't we bring back orphanages, where babies unwanted by the person who gave birth to them could at least be left in a basket on a doorstep with no questions asked, taken in and cared for until one of the hundreds of waiting parents can take it home?

We do this for unwanted cats, dogs, rabbits, pythons and rats.  Can't we make it possible for unwanted children to have an answer other than death?

January 28, 2008 -- Hippies and Liberals are very big on Choice, or at least very big on talking about Choice.  The problem with Choice that they hate knowing that one day you have to quit standing at the fork in the road and set your foot on either one path or the other. And that means you must relinquish your trip on the other path.

Liberals and Hippies hate the whole idea of "Choose ye this day whom you will serve." They want Choice, but they don't want to Choose. So they stand there at the fork in the road waiting for somebody else to magically make it possible to have their cake and eat it too...and crying loudly when making a Choice means you get one thing but not the other. If you spend your allowance on candy, you cannot spend it on batteries for your iPod. If you spend 15 minutes taking a shower, you cannot spend that 15 minutes Instant Messaging your Main Squeeze. If you spend your paycheque on car payments, you cannot spend it on rent. If you take off work two hours early to watch Susie's ballet recital, you cannot spend that time preparing your client for tomorrow's court date.

And if you vote for a Black candidate because he is Black, you cannot vote for a White woman because she is a Woman. (Void in Chicago, of course, or if you are dead.)

Hippies want Choice, but they refuse to believe that the day will ever arrive, and indeed is actually here, that they actually have to Choose.

January 23, 2008 -- Next month I turn 60 (right after my sister turns 58 and a few months before my foster sister turns 60).  I barely remember turning 50; i had just arrived in Canada and was far too busy to consider the implications of a half-century of life behind me.  In the past when Nought Birthdays arrived, I was inclined to obsess about how many things I had yet to accomplish and how short the time was growing.  Not so with this birthday.  In point of fact I have accomplished everything in life that I set out to accomplish, so it's all gravy from here on in!

Yes, that does sound as if perhaps I set my goals too low.  Nevertheless, it happens to be the truth.

My main goals in life were set on first reading Eloise by Kay Thompson, sometime in the 1950s, and Auntie Mame not long after that.  "I am a City Child," said Eloise as she walked into the Plaza Hotel in downtown New York City, past the doorman.  Although I lived on the outskirts of New York, I knew I wanted to grow up to be a City Child.  ("New York is where I want to stay! I get allergic smelling hay!  I just adore a penthouse view...")  I wanted to live in a high rise building in a city that never slept, not drive a car (well, when young I wanted to have a sports car that I could race), and get into a job that was recession-proof, portable, and didn't require math.  And once I was settled in that, i wanted to travel.  My family always travelled -- from weekends to two-week sojourns; I learned quite young to sleep wherever I was told to sleep, sit still, be quiet and exercise patience in a crowded vehicle, and look upon a hotel room without parents (they were next door) and with access to a swimming pool as the height of luxury.  Travel waited for no time, tide or financial windfall; it only wanted Daddy coming home and shouting, "Pack the car!  We're going to Duquesne!"  So when I finally earned enough money to start travelling, I was able to do it on the cheap and enjoy it. (Once I returned from England with 12 cents.)  I am on my fourth passport and counting; when I took my sister to England for her first trip, a taxi driver asked if this was my first trip to England and I told him that actually it was my fifteenth.  I have been there more than 20 times now.  I have also been to Holland, Portugual, Spain, France (only to the 24 Hours of Le Mans: 6 times), Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Morroco, Tunisia, Gibraltar, Guinea, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Antarctica, Peru, Mexico, Australia (twice), New Zealand, Switzerland and Nepal.  AND 42 of the 50 states including Alaska but not Hawaii.  I have lived in various cities in high-rises ranging from vertical slums to luxury I could barely afford; currently I live in a nice high rise near a large park.  The last car I owned was a 1974 Ford Gran Torino painted in Stasky & Hutch style; the last vehicle I owned was a motorcycle of similar vintage.  I have done motocross (and have the scars to prove it) and have taken a turn round Brands Hatch as a passenger with a Mexican open wheel driver.  I have climbed Ayers Rock in Australia, been interviewed by the newspapers (twice) and on a radio show.  I have written for publication and once had my own fan club (I happen to have the same name as a Doctor Who character and during my Doctor Who phase I wrote lots of fiction.)  I have interviewed scores of famous racing drivers, and got the last interview with James Weaver that he gave, the day before he announced his retirement.   I nearly slapped Jacques Villeneuve in the paddock at Monza (Its a long story) and congratulated Jean Alesi at Silverstone for a fifth place in Montreal in a Prost, which was one mile an hour faster than a brick in less experienced hands.  I was there when the German and Italian press booed Michael Schumacher for his disgraceful behaviour at the Austrian Grand Prix, and heard a German journalist ask him, "Do you want to win the championship because you are the best driver or because you have the best lawyers?" a question he did not answer.  I attended the first press conference in CART that Alex Zanardi gave after he lost both legs in an oval race in Germany in 2001.

I was snowed into my office in Buffalo NY for three days during the Blizzard of '77; I was in an earthquake in California and had forest fires come so close to where I lived that the traffic lights turned blue; I was on choir tour in the South in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. King, and saw first hand how thin the veneer of civilization runs.  I was evacuated in a motorboat from Hurricane Hazel, along with my sisters (none of us older than 5).  Bob Hope gave the commencement address at my university.  I was at Fontana when Greg Moore was killed. ( I spoke to him the day before and we laughed about the fact that a girl could come from Canada to an American race and the only people giving autographs were the Canadians.) 

Are there things I would like to do that are yet undone?  You bet.  I would love to attend the Monaco Grand Prix and I mean to do it first class when I go; I want to take the Orient Express; and I yearn to meet face to face with Alain Prost some day.

And if I ever get enough money to go to Singapore just for a couple of days,  I want to stay at the Raffles Hotel, see the Cricket Club, and see the billiard room where the gentleman shot the tiger.

I probably have another 15 to 20 years to accomplish those few goals. And now nobody will expect me to "settle down" and buy property and get married.  Instead, their prayer for me will be the same as it has probably been since I turned 25.  "I pray to God she doesn't break her neck."

TORONTO (January 15, 2008) -- I don't know if January has Ides or not, but if it does, today is the Ides of January and the Michigan Primary which is one more reason to Beware.  (Incidentally, has anyone noticed that Super Tuesday and Mardi Gras are the same day this year?  Things that make you go hmmmmm.)

My subject today is "Change."  No, not the change that the vast hordes of homeless drunks, squeegee kids  and mental patients who are turning Toronto into Calcutta ask me for every time I walk out of my apartment, although that kind of change usually comes into it somewhere.  The kind of Change that political wannabees are always harping on. 

Now, I may be reaching the Curmudgeon Age when things are pretty much the way I like them and the whole idea of having to re-do my whole life just Because has become a wasteful and tedious exercise.  But remember that the average age in North America now is 40.  Not 4 or 14 or even 24.  It's FORTY.  And except for the few men going through the Terrible Twos for the third time, the 100 million or so of us included in the Baby Boom are really not all that interested in Change anymore. 

We women have endured the Sixties, when about 1% of us actually looked good in streetwalker chic and a lot more of us, looking at the photos of us, can't even admit that was us in the first place.  Nowadays we live in classic clothing that fits us and whatever schmattas the latest gay designer decrees Women Will Wear can be safely consigned to the rubbish heap where most of them belong.  ("I wouldn't," says my next sister, "wash my car with that.")

We spent some quality time amassing a collection of cassettes, only to have to re-amass CDs when casettes became So Yesterday; and then came the stupid iPod which is something you can't just buy -- you have to go on line (I hear a lot of people in the upper age brackets saying STOP RIGHT THERE, SISTER!) and actually look for the music you might want, risking contamination by spyware and other rubbish in the process, and download it into this gadget that will be obsolete before you get it full of what you want to hear...but not before some young Victim of Exclusion (as thugs are called here in Kanukistan) hits you over the head and takes it away from you.  VOEs don't want CD players; those aer So Yesterday, maaaaaaan; far less do they want Walkmen.  Govern yourself accordingly.

Our antique (2001) cell phones make and receive calls, which is all we ever wanted from a phone; nevertheless, we receive countless enticing bombardments begging us to "upgrade" to a phone that is so complicated that we can't figure out how to make calls on it, much less do any of the other stuff it does, even if we could see the weeny keys or the ittybitty screens.

Likewise with our politics.  Those of us older women who have male chums in the 25-30 age bracket are used to spending an afternoon or evening listening to said chum expound his latest great idea for saving the planet, and then gently informing him that (1) somebody thought of that in 1649 (2) and it didn't work then either.  I am beginning to feel that way when I listen to candidate after candidate expound and present as "change" something we have already tried and thrown out the door on the scrap heap of history (this was before recycling.)  Listening to Mrs. Clinton try to present as new the system Sweden (and Canada) is currently heaving overboard before its entire country collapses is just one example.  John McCain expounding the policies of Gerald Ford is another.  (Remember those WIN buttons?)  And forgive me for bringing this up, but any day I expect Obama to bring out some failed Carter policy and brand it the Moral Equivalent of War (which was sunk by its acronym when somebody realized that MEOW was hardly a call to action.)  I just cannot get excited about "change" that is only jumping into the Wayback Machine and trying something that did not work the first time or is not working now somewhere close enough to the Pol so he or she could step over and take a good close look at it and decide if this really is what she wants.

I am waiting for someone to start talking up the idea Neal Boortz has suggested: the Tenth Amendment Council, which would inspect each and every FedGov program and decide whether or not it passes the Tenth Amendment test; and if not, delete it instanter.  For example, there is no emanation or penumbra in the Constitution or its amendments that gives the FedGov the right to educate children, declare that airlines cannot allow smoking on board, or require hospitals to provide abortions (or anybody else, for that matter.)  Pick any ten FedGov bureaus, councils or Round Tables and you will find that none of them are in fact going to pass the Tenth Amendment Smell Test.  Now that would be my idea of Change.

But as for all the other Change, from Windows Vista to Universal Preschool, you can bundle it all up and shove it down the chute.  Been there, seen that, don't need it, happy with what I have.

And no, I have no "spare change"  either.  Get a job.

January 2, 2008 -- This year I will turn 60 and it occurred to me last night that if I won the $30 million up for grabs in the lotto (probably won by someone who owned a convenience store that sells lotto tickets, if history repeats) I would be able to spend $1 million per year and probably not live long enough to spend it all.  I am also in the delicious position of possessing department store gift cards and not needing anything.  This is something that I used to resolve to achieve, and again I have reached a goal.

Lotto win or not, I am reminded of the old Baptist Bible School hymn, "Brighten the Corner Where You Are", which urges us not to make grandiose plans for what we would do for Mankind if we won $30 million, but rather to consider what we can do for someone we can see from where we sit.  We had a church service on New Years Day and four women spoke to me spontaneously -- after a long campaign (since November 2006) of banging on the door and complaining about the fact that nobody ever spoke to me.  This cost them nothing and was a wonderful refreshment to me that allowed me to overlook the two drivers who swerved deliberately when passing the bus stop to spray us all with dirty, slushy snow.  In the afternoon I got an e-mail from my sister with a list of Cat Who books she had found at the second-hand store and was sending me for my birthday; that made my day bright enough so I wrote encouraging notes to of my elderly, lonely aunties and sent photos of our Christmas to brighten up their day, passing along the sunshine.

Finally, I heard someone on a chat show who had resolved to stop every hour and be thankful for something that had gone or was going right, instead of focusing on the three or four things that went wrong.  That reminded me of my charitable Sainted Southern Granny, who always tried to find something good to say about even the blackest of blaggards.  "Well," she might finally conclude, "he's a nice LOOKING man..."  Later in the evening I saw Ron Paul on with Glen Beck and although I cannot say he is a handsome man, nor that he has a pleasant voice nor graceful gestures, I concluded that I could say with sincerity that a lot of really insane people had attributed things to him that he found just as insane as I did, and he had the courage to disavow them in no uncertain terms although Mr. Beck pointed out that the loonies were already saying that Dr. Paul was BOUND to say that because otherwise Mr. Beck would call him crazy too and Dr. Paul was flummoxed for a way to reply.  Nevertheless, he did reply, and so allow me to concede that perhaps he is not quite as crazy as I thought he was.

I am not making resolutions because I have met all my goals and am finally old enough to be a crank and be forgiven for it.  But I am going to try this year to brighten the corner where I am , to light a candle rather than curse the darkness, and to cheer the lonely and speak to the grumpy ... and to find something good to say about lunatics even if it is only that they are not as crazy as they look.  (On the other hand, as someone remarked in a Doctor Who episode once, "NOBODY could be as crazy as HE looks!")

Try it yourself and see if you like it.  Happy 2008.